IMPROVING OF SPIRAL PLATE HEAT-EXCHANGER PERFORMANCES

The numerical modelling of system is nowadays a useful tool in order t o improve the understanding of its operation and its CAO design. We pr esent here the different numeric approaches realised to obtain a minim al and operating model, on a industrial computer (PC), of a complex th ermal system : the spiral plate heat exchanger. We describe the spiral plate exchanger; then, we describe two steady-state numerical modelli ng of heat exchange : finite differences and Galerkine finite elements methods which are used with several computing options. With these mod els, we can study the performances in steady-state operation and the s ensitivity with geometrical and physical parameters variations.