General model for a plate heat exchangers performances prediction

A general heat transfer and pressure drop model is presented for plate heat exchangers. For many years we noticed a strong advancement in the field of plate heat exchangers. These developments were due to new materials, manufacturing technology and chevrons configurations, which made a heat exchanger more and more compact. But to determine the heat transfer and pressure drop performances, we still need empirical correlations established as a function of geometric parameters variations, like chevron angle, amplitude and pitchs. The new model presented in the paper, called the universal model, is based on the theory of porous media and includes simultaneous influence of 11 geometric parameters of the plate. Two unique correlations for single-phase flow are proposed to simulate heat transfer coefficients and friction factors as well as the global heat load and pressure drop for wide range of Reynolds number. The comparison with many experimental results shows the accuracy of the model.