Helixchanger

HELIXCHANGER® heat exchangers facilitate helical fluid flow on the shell-side providing performance advantages versus conventional baffled shell and tube units.

Industry-proven, enhanced heat transfer solution for common issues including shell-side fouling, high-pressure drop and vibration in refining, petrochemicals, gas processing, power and pharmaceuticals.

Services include:

• Crude pre-heat exchangers
• Feed pre-heaters
• Oil coolers
• Process gas coolers
• Compressor aftercoolers
• Reactor feed-effluent exchangers (Texas Towers)
• Overhead condensers
• Column reboilers

Construction

Quadrant shaped baffles are placed at an angle to the tube axis to create the helical flow pattern. The heat transfer coefficient is used to determine the optimum angle where the resultant flow delivers enhanced heat transfer performance per unit of pressure drop.

As well as the heat transfer performance benefits, fluid flows smoothly between the baffles, which reduces vibration, uniform velocities reduce fouling and both mean less maintenance.

HELIXCHANGER for new plants and revamps

• Reduced plot plan by up to 30% with smaller, or fewer shells
• Increase processing capacity by up to 40% by replacing a conventional tube bundle with a Helixchanger bundle within the same shell and piping arrangement

HELIXCHANGER can be used where:

• Conventional design is NTIW
• Conventional design is rod/baffle
• Shell-side thermal resistance >50%
• Shell-side fouling is >40%
• E-stream is >10%
• Conventional design has Re (shell) >10000
• Conventional design has large baffle spacing or double segmental baffles
• Conventional design uses low fin tubes

HELIXCHANGER® is a registered trademark of Lummus Technology, Inc.