Design space of shell and tube heat exchangers by an improved method

This paper presents an improved graphical technique for generating the feasible regions for shell and tube exchanger. designs under geometric and operational constraints. The proposed approach is based on the Bell-Delaware method for describing the shell-side flow with no simplification; this approach, therefore, has the same accuracy as the full Bell-Delaware method and can incorporate the entire range of geometric parameters of practical interest. Compared to a previous work, which uses the approximate Kern's correlations to describe the shell-side flow, the present one provides better accuracy for the thermal design of shell and tube heat exchangers with single phase fluids. One example is presented to show the application of the proposed method.