Q14-4 Improved Heat Transfer Coefficients for Calculating Tubesheet Temperature
ASME Code 2007 Section VIII - Division 1 UHX requires an average tubesheet metal temperature for calculating the allowable thermal stresses between the shell and header flanges of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. The Xist® tubesheet temperature calculations do not take into account the contribution of the heat transfer coefficients on both faces of the tubesheet, leading to conservative tubesheet designs. We applied a tubeside-face convective coefficient, Xist bulk temperatures and heat transfer coefficients, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to solve for the needed shellside-face heat transfer coefficient. We correlated the geometry of the first central baffle compartment adjacent to the tubesheet shellside-face with the shellside-face heat transfer coefficient to solve for the tubesheet metal temperature.