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ISSN Online: 2377-424X

ISBN Print: 978-1-56700-474-8

ISBN Online: 978-1-56700-473-1

International Heat Transfer Conference 16
August, 10-15, 2018, Beijing, China

OPTIMAL DESIGN OF MULTISTREAM PLATE FIN HEAT EXCHANGERS USED IN THE COOLING STAGE OF A CASCADE LNG PLANT

Get access (open in a dialog) DOI: 10.1615/IHTC16.hte.024301
pages 5141-5150

Abstract

Multistream plate-fin heat exchangers are the core of the cascade liquefaction natural gas (LNG) plant and their performance is a key issue to an efficient operation of a cryogenic plant. Basically, the thermal-hydraulic performance of any heat exchanger is related to flow patterns and heat transfer characteristics in the heat exchanger, and also to the geometric parameters of the heat exchanger. Thus, for a LNG plant, an optimization procedure to improve the thermal-hydraulic performance of the heat exchangers, and as a consequence, the coefficient of performance (COP) of the thermodynamic cycle, can be used, especially due to the great number of variables that impact the performance of those components. In the present research, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is applied to maximize the COP of the cooling stage of a cascade LNG plant for a group of multistream plate fin heat exchangers, such as wavy fin, perforated fin, plain fin and serrated fin. Fin type, fin height, fin thickness and fin frequency are selected as the input variables to find the optimal design. Moreover, Aspen EDR (Exchanger Design & Rating) is integrated to Aspen HYSYS to solve the mass and energy balances of all the geometries of the heat exchangers here in proposed. The results from the optimization procedure indicated that a COP improvement of 12.5% is achieved in comparison to the baseline.