Nusselt and Friction Factor Correlations for Gasketed Plate Heat Exchangers in Variable Inlet Conditions

Abstract

Gasketed plate heat exchangers (GPHEs) are essential equipment in many industries due to their efficiency and compact design. They are particularly valued owing to their versatility, but GPHE designing and sizing are challenging due to divergences in Nusselt number and friction factor correlations. In addition to the influence of Reynolds and Prandtl numbers on the abovementioned correlations, recent studies have shown that GPHE performance is also affected by geometrical plate features, GPHE assembly accuracy quantified by the tightening distance, and inlet conditions in the branches. Despite the noticeable effort in the literature to develop more accurate GPHE correlations, no study to date has presented correlations affected by the plate thickness, tightening distance, and branches' inlet conditions (differences in the inlet pressures). Therefore, new correlations were created that filled this gap, including the influences of the chevron angle and the corrugation aspect ratio. With the aid of multiple linear regressions, the trends and large variations of our experimental databases were satisfactorily reproduced. The results have been compared to relevant literature.