Performance and Irreversibility Analysis of Spiral Plate Heat Exchangers

Herein, a model is developed based on energy balance equations to analyze and improve the performance of single‐phase counter‐current and co‐current flow spiral plate heat exchangers (SPHEs). The aim is to comprehensively check the performance and irreversibility factors based on energy, entropy, and entransy methods. First, a new optimization algorithm is proposed to maximize pressure drops and minimize the total cost by considering the geometric proportion of the SPHE. Second, the SPHE spiral turns are modeled as a series‐connected equivalent internal heat exchangers network to determine the temperature boundaries and develop the temperature–enthalpy diagram in analysis. The algorithm and modeling is validated in two stages for different flow arrangement SPHEs. Performance and irreversibility analysis shows similar result trends in different flow patterns. In third stage, a wide range of counter‐current flow SPHEs with constant heat transfer rate is designed, modeled, and analyzed by energy, entropy, and entransy methods. To recapitulate, results assert that SPHEs designed by new algorithm have higher overall heat‐transfer coefficient and compactness. Although entropy and entransy analyses reveal irreversibility trends with effectiveness in SPHEs, entransy analysis is more effective and reliable to analyze the SPHEs. This article develops a new optimization algorithm for spiral plate heat exchangers, and proposes a mathematical model for spiral turns as a network of heat exchangers. Solving extracted energy balance equations provides required temperature distributions for analyzing the performance and thermal irreversibilities in spiral turns. Energy, entropy, and entransy methods are studied to find a reliable analysis method.