When retrofitting heat exchangers, heat transfer engineers have various options to assess. Whether they are considering a simple re-design (e.g. different number of passes or tube diameters in a shell-and-tube heat exchanger) or the introduction of new technologies (e.g. helical baffles, twisted tubes, brazed plate heat exchangers), it is always difficult to quantitatively assess the benefits and drawbacks of retrofitting heat exchangers as this involves evaluating various interacting factors. For example, performance improvements can be quantified through metrics such as increased heat transfer efficiency, reduced energy consumption, or increased production. However, very often a change in design of one heat exchanger has a significant impact on the operations of the entire process system and technologies that may improve thermal performance may impact production.

Hexxcell Dynamic Retrofit Test™ is a data-driven approach to test performance of a proposed retrofit design in Hexxcell Studio™ using historical plant data and assess how the exchanger would have performed if in operation over a given period. It allows identifying benefits in energy savings as a result of reduced fouling in the retrofitted exchanger also including complex network interactions.​

1. Quantitative assessment of benefits and drawbacks of re-design on fouling rates, overall performance, network interactions and pressure drop;
2. Estimated savings in terms of energy use/recovery at the heat exchanger and network level, energy use at the furnace and/or steam production when relevant, production, CO2 emissions;
3. Estimation of economic trade-offs and ROI of various retrofit/mitigation options.

Heat Transfer Engineers

Repsol