Here we are again speaking about free flow heat exchangers. That’s because these exchangers allow to achieve interesting energy recovery and heat transfer applications, and in a previous video we’ve had already explained it related to a particular application in the textile sector.

But there are also applications which are not necessarily involving an energy recovery task, but they necessarily require the cooling of the served production process. In this specific case, free flow exchangers are employed in the pulp and paper industry which includes sectors that are processing paper pulp, and therefore, clearly before paper sheets are shaped, involving the use of water full of suspended solid particles.

Another similar application where we use several of these exchangers is related to the plastic grains production industry. Even in this case, the process water that must be cooled is highly dirty and full of suspended solid particles.

These are plate heat exchangers, and they present a peculiar construction, as we have already seen. Someone objected, well having no contact points between the plates, what level of differential pressure they can stand.
Clearly, they can stand lower differential pressures compared to classic plate heat exchangers. That’s the reason why, in this case, plates have a higher thickness, starting with 0,8 or 1 mm, depending on the size of the plate. They are usually quite big plates and they have low resistance, and thus low design project pressures arriving up to PN6, PN10, rarely PN16.

But, after all, the kind of applications they are employed in never require high working pressures, usually limited to the circulating pressure of a centrifugal pump, and that means 3 or 4 bar.