WOLDIA UNIVERSITY

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL AND CHEMICAL
ENGINEERING

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Design of Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

By
Tadesse T.
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 Designing Shell-and-Tube Heat Exchangers
 Kern’s method

 Introduction to Kern’s method

 Algorithm of design procedure for shell-and-tube heat exchangers

 Design procedure steps along with an example

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 Objectives

 This lecture on designing shell-and-tube HEs serves as an

introduction lecture to the subject, and covers:

 Introduction to “Kern’s method” definition along with its advantages

and disadvantages

 Developing an algorithm for the design of shell-and-tube exchangers

 Finally, following up the procedure set out in the algorithm in an example

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 Introduction to Kern’s method
 Kern’s was based on experimental work on commercial exchanger
 Advantages:
 Giving reasonably satisfactory prediction of the heat-transfer coefficient for
standard design
 Simple to apply
 Accurate enough for preliminary design calculations
 Accurate enough for designs when uncertainty in other design parameter is
such that the use of more elaborate method is not justified.
 Disadvantage:
 The prediction of pressure drop is less satisfactory, as pressure drop is
more affected by leakage and by passing than heat transfer
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 The method does not take account of the bypass and leakage streams4
Design procedure for shell-and-tube heat exchangers
(Kern’s method)

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Figure 1: design procedure of kern method 5
 Kern’s Method Design Example

 Design an exchanger to sub-cool condensate from ethanol

condenser from 95 °C to 40 ° and flow-rate of methanol
100,000kg/h. Brackish water (seawater) will be used as
the coolant, with a temperature rise from 25° to 40 °C.

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 Step 1
 Collect physical properties and HE specifications:
 Physical properties
Table 1

 HE specifications:
 Coolant (brackish water) is corrosive, so assign to tube-side.
 Use one shell pass and two tube passes.
 At shell side, fluid (methanol) is relatively clean. So, use 1.25 triangular pitch

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 Tube Arrangements
The tubes in an exchanger are usually arranged in an equilateral triangular, square, or rotated square
pattern.

Figure 2 :tube arrangement

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 Tube Pattern Applications
 The triangular and rotated square patterns give higher heat transfer rates,
but at the expense of a higher pressure drop than the square pattern.
 A square, or rotated square arrangement, is used for heavily fouling
fluids, where it is necessary to mechanically clean the outside of the tubes.
 The recommended tube pitch is 1.25times the tube outside diameter; and
this will normally be used unless process requirements dictate
otherwise.

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 Step 2
 Define duty, Make energy balance if needed
 To start step 2, the duty (heat transfer rate) of methanol (the hot stream
or water, the cold stream) needed to be calculated.

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 Step 2(Cont’d)
 The cold and the hot stream heat loads are equal. So, cooling water flow
rate is calculated as follow:

 The well-known “logarithmic mean” temperature difference (LMTD or

lm) is calculated by:

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 Mean Temperature Difference
 The usual practice in the design of shell and tube exchangers is to estimate
the “true temperature difference "from the logarithmic mean temperature by
applying a correction factor to allow for the departure from true counter-
current flow:

 Where:
 Δ𝑇𝑀 = true temperature difference,
 𝐹𝑡 = the temperature correction factor
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 Temperature Correction Factor
 The correction factor (Ft) is a function of the shell and tube fluid
temperatures, and the number of tube and shell passes.
 It is normally correlated as a function of two dimensionless temperature
ratios:
𝒕𝟐 − 𝒕𝟏
𝑷=
𝑻𝟏 − 𝒕 𝟏
𝑻𝟏 −𝑻𝟐
R=
𝒕𝟐 −𝒕𝟏

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 Cont.….
 or a 1shell : 2tube pass exchanger, the correction factor is plotted in Fig
below:

 Figure 4:Temperature correction factor: one shell pass; two or more even tube passes
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 The two temperature ratio factors are:
Cont.….
𝒕𝟐 − 𝒕𝟏 𝟒𝟎 − 𝟐𝟓
𝑷= = = 𝟎. 𝟐𝟏
𝑻𝟏 − 𝒕𝟏 𝟗𝟓 − 𝟐𝟓
𝑻𝟏 −𝑻𝟐 𝟗𝟓−𝟒𝟎
R= = = 𝟑. 𝟔𝟕
𝒕𝟐 −𝒕𝟏 𝟒𝟎−𝟐𝟓

 From Fig 4, the correction factor (Ft) is 0.85.

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 Step 3

 Assume value of overall coefficient 𝑈𝑂 𝑎𝑠𝑠

 Typical values of the overall heat-transfer coefficient for various types of heat
exchanger are given in Table 1.
 Fig. 5 can be used to estimate the overall coefficient for tubular exchangers
(shell and tube).
 The film coefficients given in Fig.5 include an allowance for fouling.
 The values given in Table 1and Fig. 5can be used for the preliminary sizing of
equipment for process evaluation, and as trial values for starting a detailed
thermal design.
From Table 2 or Fig. 5: U=600𝑤 𝑚2 ℃
 12/7/2019 16
 Cont.….
Table 2:typicall over all coefficients

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Cont...

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 Tube Pattern Applications
 The triangular and rotated square patterns give higher heat transfer rates,
but at the expense of a higher pressure drop than the square pattern.
 A square, or rotated square arrangement, is used for heavily fouling
fluids, where it is necessary to mechanically clean the outside of the tubes.
 The recommended tube pitch is 1.25times the tube outside diameter; and
this will normally be used unless process requirements dictate
otherwise.

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 Cont.….

Fig. 5: Overall coefficients (join process side duty to service side and read U from center scale)
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 Step 4
 Calculate tube number, Calculate shell diameter
 Provisional area:

 So, the total outside surface area of tubes is 278𝑚2

 Choose 20mm o.d. (outside diameter), 16mm i.d. (inside diameter), 4.88-m-long tubes ( ), cupro-
nickel.
 Allowing for tube-sheet thickness, take tube length: L= 4.83m
 Surface area of one tube: A = πDL = 4.83 x 20x 10−3 π = 0.303𝑚2

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 Cont.….
 An estimate of the bundle diameter 𝐷𝑏 can be obtained from equation below which is
an empirical equation based on standard tube layouts. The constants for use in this
equation, for triangular and square patterns, are given in Table 3.

 where 𝐷𝑏 = bundle diameter in mm, 𝑑𝑜 = tube outside diameter in mm., = 𝑁𝑡 = number

of tubes.
 As the shell-side fluid is relatively clean use 1.25triangular pitch.
 So, for this example:

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 Cont.….
 The constants for different types of shell and tube pass.

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 Cont.….
 Use a split-ring floating head type for Fig. 6.
 From Fig. 6, bundle diametrical clearance is 68mm.
 Shell diameter (Ds):
Ds= Bundle diameter + Clearance = 826+ 68= 894mm.
 Note 1: nearest standard pipe size are 863.6or 914.4mm.
 Note 2: Shell size could be read from standard tube count tables
[Kern (1950)

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 Cont.….

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Fig. 6: Shell-bundle clearance
 Step 5
 Estimate tube- and shell-side heat transfer coefficient
 Tube-side heat transfer coefficient:

 Since we have two tubes pass, we divide the total numbers of tubes by two to find the numbers of
tubes per pass, that is:

 Total flow area is equal to numbers of tubes per pass multiply by tube cross sectional area:

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 Cont.….

Fig. 7: Equivalent diameter, cross-sectional areas and wetted perimeters.

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 Cont.….

 Coefficients for water: a more accurate estimate can be made by using equations developed specifically for
water.
 The physical properties are conveniently incorporated into the correlation. The equation below has been
adapted from data given by:

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 Cont.….

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 Cont.….

 Check reasonably the previously calculated value 3812W/m2°C with value

calculated, 3852W/m2°C.

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 Cont.….

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Fig. 8: Tube-side heat-transfer factor
 Cont.….

 Shell-side heat transfer coefficient:

 Baffle spacing: The baffle spacing used range from 0.2 to 1.0 shell diameters.
 A close baffle spacing will give higher heat transfer coefficients but at the expense of higher
pressure drop.
 Area for cross-flow: calculate the area for cross-flow ,𝐴𝑠 for the hypothetical row at the shell
equator, given by:

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 Cont.….

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 Cont.….

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 Cont.….

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 Cont.….
 For the calculated Reynolds number, the read value of jh from Fig. 9for 25 per cent
baffle cut and the tube arrangement, we can now calculate the shell-side heat transfer
coefficient hs from:

 The tube wall temperature can be estimated using the following method:
 Mean temperature difference across all resistance:

 Which shows that the correction for low-viscosity fluid is not significant.
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 Step 7
 Pressure drop
 Tube side: From Fig. 10, for Re = 14925
𝑗𝑓 =4.3× 10−3
 Neglecting the viscosity correction term

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 Cont.….

Fig. 10: Tube-side friction factors

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 Cont.….

12/7/2019 Fig. 11: Shell-side friction factors, segmental baffles 39

 Cont.….

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 Cont.….

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