Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM)

ISSN: 2251-6204
www.mjltm.org

Optimization of plate-fin type heat exchanger in the carbon dioxide

removal operation by the entropy generation minimization method
using MATLAB software in Ammonia Plant of Kermanshah
Petrochemical Co.
Saeed Ovaysia ,Zakieh Rostamib,*,Amir salarabadic, Maryam Heidaryand,
Hooshyar Rezaei e, Mohamad Amin Rostamif
a
Department of chemical engineering, Faculty of technical- engineering, University of Razi, kermanshah, Iran
b
Department of chemical engineering, Faculty of technical- engineering, University of Azad of Kermanshah, kermanshah, Iran
c
Department of Ilam gas treating co, Faculty of head of process, Address:Ilam, Iran
d
Department of chemical engineering, Faculty of technical- engineering, University of Azad of Kermanshah, kermanshah, Iran
e
Young Researchers and Elite Club , Kermanshah Branch, Islamic Azad University, Kermanshah ,Iran
f
Department of chemical engineering, Faculty of technical- engineering, University of Azad of borojerd, kermanshah, Iran

Abstract

In this study, an optimization model has been proposed for exchangers (plate-fin) to minimize the amount of entropy
created. Nowadays, the most economical way to produce power generation pumps in distributed generation systems is
using small gas turbines. One of the methods to increase the efficiency of the gas turbines is the application of gas
turbines for heat recovery from hot exhaust gases emitted from the gas turbines. Plate-fin heat exchanger is one of the
types that are used in industry for heat recovery. Therefore, according to the importance of this issue in the present
article, optimization of the heat exchanger (plate-fin) used to minimize the amount of entropy is surveyed. Entropy
production in heat exchangers is divided into two parts: production of thermal entropy and production of pressure1
entropy. In this paper, the total entropy in the heat exchanger is introduced as the objective function of optimization
and the MATLAB software is used for optimization. Optimization decision variables are the geometric features of the
heat exchangers. Using this method results in the design of a heat exchanger which, in comparison with the other designs,
enjoys the lowest amount of entropy production, pressure drop, and power pump.

© 2016 The Authors. Published by EBSCO.

Keywords: Optimization, Objective Function, Reduction of the Produced Entropy, Heat Exchangers, Pressure Drop;

1. Introduction
In the heat exchanger, the designing problem of the efficiency minimizing has the utmost importance. plate-fin
type heat exchangers have been used for decades in aircraft industry, air separation and chemical plants. This kind of
heat exchanger is very compact and with high specifications and features is made for various industrial applications.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +989188593923;+988338391504 fax: +0-000-000-0000 .

E-mail address: z_rostami@hotmail.com

© 2016 The Authors. Published by EBSCO.

2 Saeed Ovaysi ,Zakieh Rostami, ,Amir salarabadi, Maryam Heidaryan, Hooshyar Rezaei, Mohamad Amin Rostami/ Vol.6 , Issue.4.3 , July (2016) 123–129

Plate and fin are used in this type of heat exchanger for heat transfer between the hot and cold fluid. Optimum
design of PFHE is an important and very desirable aspect for the most practical operation that can rise the profits
and special benefits for economic performance.
Classical and non-classical optimization of heat exchanger methods can make reaching to this goal possible. In
1987, Bejan examined thermal and pressure drop in the channels (Bejan, 1987). He found that heat losses will
decrease when the heat exchange level increases, while pressure losses will increase. Den Buick considered the
optimum designing of cross-flow heat exchangers and calculated optimum heat exchange of heat exchanger. (Den
Buick, 1991). Rao investigated all classical and non-classical methods used in the optimization of tube-shell
exchangers (Rao, 1991).
Venkatrathnam and Abramzon in the separate works offered an optimal design for the heat exchanger through
Lagrange multipliers and iterative method (Venkatrathnam, 1991; Abramzon et al., 1993). Hesselgreaves suggested
an analytical method to optimize the size of the compact heat exchanger (Hesselgreaves, 1993). Sanaye et al.
provided a plate-fin type heat exchanger using SGA-11 and neural network analysis (Sanaye et al., 2010). Ahmadi et
al. optimized the compact heat exchanger via thermal modeling (Ahmad et al., 2011).
One of the attractive and useful methods for optimizing heat exchangers and other energy systems is the entropy
generation minimization method that has been introduced by Bejan (Bejan, 1947). From the perspective of
analytical methods, objective functions are selected based on the First Law of Thermodynamics or a combination of
the first and second laws. The second category that includes Entropy and Energy has been common among the
researchers. The method introduced by Bejan is also used for optimization of heat transfer devices. This paper aims
to optimize plate-fin type heat exchanger using the entropy generation minimization method. The amount of
produced entropy is divided into entropy production due to heat transfer and entropy production due to fluid friction.
In this article, the optimization is performed using MATLAB software.
In this optimization process, the exchanger geometry is selected as decision variables and appropriate
constraints has been applied at this process. Finally, the amount of work and heat at the optimum point are
evaluated.

2. Result and discussion

The studied heat exchanger that is a plate-fin type heat exchanger is shown in Figure 1, the heat exchanger has non-
aligned fluid, which hot and cold fluids flow in two channels separately.
 Saeed Ovaysi ,Zakieh Rostami, ,Amir salarabadi, Maryam Heidaryan, Hooshyar Rezaei, Mohamad Amin Rostami / Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM) ISSN: 2251-6204

Figure 1. The structure of plate-fin type heat exchanger

In this exchanger, heat is transferred from hot fluid to cold fluid through the gas flow.
For modeling the heat exchanger, the following assumptions are assumed:
• Flow distribution to both sides of the exchanger is considered constant and one-dimensional
• Fluid temperature is the same in each surface.
• Fins in two fluids has the same steps.
• All physical properties of hot and cold fluid is constant and independent of temperature and pressure.
• Uniform distribution of heat transfer coefficients and heat levels are considered over the source.
• There is no heat loss

Table 1: The fluid information

Parameters Hot fluid(a) Cold
fluid(b)
Inlet Temperature, (K) 397 354

outlet Temperature, (K) 360 375

Inlet Pressure, (kPa) 3.37 48.2

3
Density, (kg.m ) 980.63 969.5
3
Volume Flow(m /s) 0.219 0.22

Viscosity(kg/m. s) 8.78 1.164

Mass Flow(kg/s) 214.76 213.3

Specific Heat(j/kg. k) 1687.6 2760

Number of Fins(N) 30

Number of Layers(n) 10

Molecular of Weight 119.2

R 8.314
A 3
L 6

Based on the mentioned assumptions, exchanger design calculations and energy equations are as follows:
4 Saeed Ovaysi ,Zakieh Rostami, ,Amir salarabadi, Maryam Heidaryan, Hooshyar Rezaei, Mohamad Amin Rostami/ Vol.6 , Issue.4.3 , July (2016) 123–129

Considering that there is the thermal resistance on the surface, the overall heat transfer coefficient is derived from
the following equation:

In above equation and . Also is derived from equation no. 5.

Where H is fin height, is distance between fins and is the fin thickness. that is the fin efficiency is
calculated from equation no. 6:

is Conductivity coefficient of heat exchangers and h is heat transfer coefficient that is obtained from the equation
no. 7:

a is the cross-sectional area and j parameter is measured from equation no. 8:

Entropy generation minimization method is based on the fundamental principles of thermodynamics, heat and mass
transfer and fluid mechanics. This concept was introduced by Bejan in 1987 to reveal the irreversibility in practical
works. The irreversibility of the heat exchanger is related to the heat transfer between the fluids that is originated
from the temperature difference and their frictional pressure drop. Based on the Bejan findings, the temperature and
 Saeed Ovaysi ,Zakieh Rostami, ,Amir salarabadi, Maryam Heidaryan, Hooshyar Rezaei, Mohamad Amin Rostami / Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM) ISSN: 2251-6204

pressure of entropy production rate is calculated as follows.

Entropy production rate based on irreversible heat transfer is calculated from equation no.9:

The entropy rate for a pressure drop is obtained from equation no. 10:

The pressure drop is calculated from equation no. 11:...

Where f factor is calculated from the following equation:

The total produced Entropy will be:

Finally, the rate of entropy production to the central level will be:

One of the criteria to optimize the geometry of plate-fin type heat exchanger is the minimization of the amount of
produced entropy. Thus, the optimization objective function in this study is the minimization of equation no.14.
Optimization variables include the height of fins for the two hot and cold channels; fins distance and heat transfer
area of hot and cold channels.
It should be noted that the overall level of total heat transfer that is heat transfer area of heated and cooled fluid is a
constant and limited quantity. Therefore, variable is defined as the ratio of overall area of total heat transfer to the
heated fluid area:
6 Saeed Ovaysi ,Zakieh Rostami, ,Amir salarabadi, Maryam Heidaryan, Hooshyar Rezaei, Mohamad Amin Rostami/ Vol.6 , Issue.4.3 , July (2016) 123–129

Figure 2: The studied heat exchanger

The fluid that flows in the exchanger is MDEA. Its Heat capacity has not been reported in the PFD so the
conditions of all fluid was simulated in HYSYS software and thermal capacity was calculated. In addition, flow
pressure of 26 that is reported in PFD is assigned to before pump operation. The inlet pressure to exchanger is
assumed 20 bar.
Finally, the optimization was performed and results are reported in Table 2.

Table 2: The optimization results

The heat transfer surface of hot channel (m2) 2.5906
The heat transfer surface of cold channel (m2) 0.4094
Fin height in cold part(mm) 7.4135
Fin height in cold part( mm) 2.9959

Fin distance ( mm) 11.7206

11.0741
The total produced entropy )

3.Conclusion

The aim of this study was the optimization of plate-fin type heat exchanger in the carbon dioxide removal
operation by the entropy generation minimization method. The results show that optimization of entropy
minimization approach will reduce power consumption of pumps used in the compact heat exchanger. In fact, the
performed optimization reduces costs significantly by keeping thermal efficiency compact of heat exchanger
constant. With regard to the comparison of the results of this study and previous studies, the amount of entropy
production in the optimal design was about 11.7, which was much less than what was reported in references 12 and
13, which is about 63.32 and 53.2, respectively. Although the project aim was not cost optimization but optimization
reduces pumping power and this work reduce the cost of the system. Obviously, this method can also be used in
other exchanger to have the same effects (Manish Mishra et al., 2009; Rao et al., 2010,).
 Saeed Ovaysi ,Zakieh Rostami, ,Amir salarabadi, Maryam Heidaryan, Hooshyar Rezaei, Mohamad Amin Rostami / Modern Journal of Language Teaching Methods (MJLTM) ISSN: 2251-6204

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