Plate Heat-Exchangers – Exposing a huge design fault - The Thin Blue Line - and technical solution
The Thin Blue Line This article exposes a fundamental design flaw in the design and selection of plate heat-exchangers (PHE). Thankfully, we have developed a technical solution to this challenge! Background We performed a large data analysis of extremely large data sets in order to check the thermo-fluid performance predicted by the selection software program from one of the world's largest and most prestigious plate heat-exchanger manufacturers, as well as a number of their competitors. This article discusses the surprising findings we discovered. We found that the fundamental theory underlying the design, selecting and optimizing of plate heat-exchangers, has a hidden flaw. This flaw then often results in a huge number of off-optimum, or sub-optimum heat-exchangers. These are seen in the sea of dark blue dots , on the plot shown in Figure 1 below. Actually, it turns out that there are at least two fundamental technology oversights. The Thin Blue Line Figure 1 - The Thin Blue L
