What is meant by Fouling in Heat Exchanger?

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written 7.9 years ago by

teamques10 ★ 64k

In a heat exchanger, during normal operation, the tube surface gets covered by deposits of ash, soot, dirt and scale etc. This phenomenon of rust formation and deposition of fluid impurities is called Fouling.
Due to these surface deposits, the thermal resistance is increased and eventually the performance of the heat exchanger lowers.
Since, it is difficult to ascertain the thickness and thermal conductivity of the scale deposits, the effect of scale on the flow is considered by specifying an equivalent scale heat transfer coefficient hs.
If hsiandhso be the heat transfer coefficients for the scale deposited on the inside and outside surfaces respectively, then the thermal resistance to scale formation on the inside and outside surface are given by,

Rsi = 1Ai.hsi

Rso = 1Ao.hso

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