Analysis of transient behaviour of multipass shell and tube heat exchangers with the dispersion model

To take the effect of shellside flow maldistributions into account, the dispersion model is used for predicting the transient behaviour subject to arbitrary inlet temperature changes in multipass shell and tube heat exchangers. The number and size of tubeside passes are arbitrary and two possible flow arrangements are considered. Besides the thermal capacities of both fluids and the core wall, the thermal capacity of the shell wall is included in the model. The final solution is obtained by means of the numerical inverse Laplace transform. The influence of the shellside flow maldistribution and the thermal capacity of the shell wall are discussed.