New heat exchangers improve performance and sustainability
In the March 2024 edition of Chemical Engineering, Solex Thermal Science was invited to share insights on how heat exchange technology is helping chemical processors improve the performance and sustainability of their operations.
“In addition to efficiency, the current trend we are seeing is a real drive towards increases in operating temperatures and pressures," says Albert Bedell, Technical Director at Solex Thermal Science.
"This seems to be due to an increase in focus on energy recovery and overall efforts to reduce the energy intensity of the process heat. Processors are taking a fresh look at their processes and are taking a ‘nothing-is-sacred’ approach to reimagining things," says Bedell.
Often, this has evolved into conversations about how Solex's heat exchange technology can better handle the operational extremes of the chemical process industries.
“The rub here is that a lot of these processes are operating at temperatures well beyond what standard heat exchangers can operate at — say north of 600 or 700°C. The low availability of options in this temperature range is a challenge we hear about quite often.”
In turn, Solex is working on options that move the company's solutions beyond the temperature limits imposed by using steels as materials of construction.
“One of the big shifts we’ve made over the past few years is to rethink the overall geometry of our exchangers for these applications, which gives us a lot more flexibility to use different materials,” says Bedell.
“We are currently moving through the development of some prototypes and are very excited to see how far we’ll be able to push the temperature limits of our equipment in 2024."
This entry was tagged Energy, Heating, Cooling, and last updated on 2024-3-6
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