• Korean Journal of Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.250-261
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• 1999

Based on a set of performance plots relating the design variables to the imposed conditions, an easy-to-use and versatile design procedure for chevron-type multipass plate heat exchangers is developed. In order for the present procedure to cover multipass with unequal passes and non-unity ratio of heat capacity rate, each stream number of transfer unit is adopted as the basic design variable instead of the exchanger number of transfer unit. It is found that there exists a unique relation between the stream and exchanger number of transfer units regardless of the chevron angle and the plate length. In addition, for a given value of the pressure drop the heat transfer area per unit mass flow rate can be expressed in terms of the stream number of transfer unit only. These two relationships in the form of simple plots constitute the framework of design. The sample results in comparison with the available data indicate that the present procedure includes the previous ones as a subset, and that every design method is affected essentially by the selection of specific correlations for the heat transfer coefficient and the friction factor.