Computer implementation of the passage arrangement for plate - Fin heat exchangers according to local balance principle

A two-step method for stacking arrangement of passages in multistream plate-fin heat exchanger is proposed. The first step (predict step) is to initialize the arrangement according to a local-balance principle, and the second step (correct step) is to re-adjust the arrangement according to the results of differential computation of the temperature distribution. The computer implementation process of the local balance principle is described in detail and three examples are illustrated to show the feasibility of this principle. A subroutine program is provided to facilitate the reader to adopt this principle.