Plate heat exchangers: calculation of pressure drop for single phase convection in turbulent flow regime

Plate heat exchangers (PHE) are of primary importance for many technical applications. To use PHE effectively it is necessary to calculate the pressure drop correctly. Unfortunately, in open literature a large difference between the different authors occurs. As shown in an earlier work (Gusew and Stuke in Int J Chem Eng vol. 2019, 6) an essential portion of this difference lies in the pressure drop of the distribution zone. In this work new geometrical parameters are introduced to calculate the pressure drop of the distribution zone. The resulting correlations with new parameters include the pressure drop of both corrugated field and distribution zones. This new three-component model for hydraulic resistance show good agreement with experimental data for PHEs in turbulent flow regime. Furthermore, observed differences in data of other authors can be explained by the influence of the new introduced geometrical parameters of the distribution zone.