Adiabatic Wheel Heat Exchanger

Adiabatic wheel heat exchanger is the third type that uses an intermediate fluid or solid store to hold heat, which is then moved to the other side of the heat exchanger to be released. For instance, adiabatic wheels which contain large wheel with fine threads rotating through the hot and cold fluids, and fluid heat exchangers. This kind is employed when it is agreeable for a minimum amount of mixing to happen between the two streams.

Heat transfer and mass transfer

It is a device employed to exchange heat from a fluid on one side of a barrier to another fluid flowing on the other side of the barrier. When employed to achieve concurrent heat transfer and mass transfer, heat exchangers become special equipment kinds, frequently known by other names. When fired directly by a compulsion process, they become furnaces, boilers, heaters, tube-still heaters and engines. If there is a change in phase in one of the flowing fluids-condensation of steam to water, for instance the equipment may be called a chiller, evaporator, sublimate, distillation column reboiler, condenser and cooler condenser.

For chemical reactions and energy generation

Adiabatic wheel heat exchangers may be created that chemical reactions or energy generation processes can be performed inside them. The exchanger then becomes an integral part of the reaction system and may be known, for instance as a nuclear reactor, catalytic reactor or polymerizer. Heat exchangers usually employed only for the transfer and helpful removal or recovery of heat without an accompanying phase change.

The fluids on either side of the barrier are commonly liquids, yet they may be gases such as steam, air, or hydrocarbon vapors or they may be fluid metals like sodium or mercury. Fused salts are also employed as heat exchanger fluids in some applications. Very often the barrier between the fluids is a metal wall like a tube or a pipe. Nevertheless, it can be fabricated from metal plate or from graphite, plastic, or other corrosion resistant materials of construction.

The applications and the usage

Adiabatic wheel heat exchangers find broad application in the chemical process industries containing petroleum refining and petrochemical processing in the food industry, for instance, for pasteurization of milk and canning of processed foods, in the generation of steam for production of power and electricity, in nuclear reaction systems, in aircraft and space vehicles and in the field of cryogenics for the low-temperature separation of gases. These heat exchangers are the workhorses of the whole field of heating, ventilating and air-conditioning.

Questions:

• What is adiabatic wheel heat exchanger?
• State the role of adiabatic wheel heat exchangers.