Quick Guide to Determine Pressure Drops

Need a quick way to determine what happens if you increase or decrease a water (or any other Newtonian Fluid) flow through a Plate Heat Exchanger?

Do not have time to phone up the supplier, talk to someone who is not really interested in helping you because there is no potential sale involved, only to receive the immortal line of “I’ll get back to you”?

Look no further – below is a quick tool to provide an indication of a new pressure drop figure if a flowrate is adjusted through a Plate Heat Exchanger.

It is necessary to know the pressure drop at a given flowrate as a starting point.

Increasing the flow:
10% increase in flow Pressure drop goes up 20%
20% increase in flow Pressure drop goes up 40%
30% increase in flow Pressure drop goes up 60%
50% increase in flow Pressure drop doubles
100% increase in flow Pressure drop goes up 4 times

Decreasing the flow:
Reduce flow by 10% Pressure drop goes down by 19%
Reduce flow by 20% Pressure drop goes down by 37%
Reduce flow by 30% Pressure drop halves
Reduce flow by 50% Pressure drop goes down by 74%
Reduce flow by 75% Pressure drop goes down by 93%

Technical Guide-lines brought to you by TimSmith Heat Exchangers Ltd

 
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