Callahan handed her a fresh coffee. “Welcome to the clan, kid. You just made the refinery a little richer—and the operators’ lives a little less hellish.”
“You’ve got laminar flow in the shell,” Callahan said, peering over her shoulder. “Look at the velocity profile.” htri heat exchanger design
Elena reduced unsupported tube length by adding support plates. She increased tube wall thickness from 1.65 mm to 2.11 mm. HTRI’s vibration analysis tab recalculated: frequency ratio now 1.8 (safe above 1.2). Red warning turned yellow, then green. Callahan handed her a fresh coffee
She clicked to the (shell-and-tube) module. The color-coded flow map showed dead zones near the shell’s center. The baffle spacing was too wide—fluid was meandering, not turbulent. She reduced baffle spacing from 500 mm to 300 mm. Re-ran. “Look at the velocity profile
Better. U climbed to 250. But pressure drop on the shell side spiked—from 40 kPa to 95 kPa, exceeding the 70 kPa limit. Trade-off city.