Air Cooled Heat Exchangers: How to select Finned Tubes Coils for Heavy Duties.

The air-cooled heat exchangers are mostly used when the plant location and the ambient conditions do not allow an easy and economic use of other cooling systems.
The most evident advantages of air-cooled heat exchangers are:

• Prevention of thermal and chemical pollution of cooling fluids 
• Flexibility for any plant location and plot plan arrangement 
• Reduction of maintenance costs
• Easy installation by bolted assembly
• Lower environmental impact than shell and tube heat exchangers thanks to the elimination of an auxiliary water supply

 Uniterm manufactures a wide range of finned tube coils, both to customers' drawings and on their own design. 
In addition to more robust finned tube coils with spiral-wound fins, it is  also possible to offer  more compact and economical fin-coil packs for less severe operating conditions.

Finned Tube Coils

Finned tube coils are employed in drying and dehumidification processes, condensing, refrigeration, air conditioning and heat recovery. They can be supplied in a wide range of combinations of metals: carbon steel, stainless steel, aluminium, copper alloys, nickel alloys, titanium.

The industrial applications are numerous and include, amongst others: 

- chemical industry
- food industry
- textile production
- paper works
- tanneries
- wood industry
- production of surface coatings
- plastic moulding industry
- cooling of turbine air intakes
- anti-freeze coils for process air
- coils for hybrid cooling towers
- printing machines
- solvent recovery
- greenhouses and breeding area

Air heaters Applications

- gas to air and fluid to air heat exchangers
- gas heaters
- crossflow bare and extended surface heat exchangers
- embedded, welded, hot dip galvanized high fin tubes
- ASME or national pressure vessel code construction

There are a lot of manufacturers all ove the world, but if we are evaluating heavy duty Air Cooled Heat Exchangers  amount it is not so big. 

Let's try to give examples of what should be considered "heavy duty"

• Steam air condensers (positive pressure ) Power plants ,Chemicals
• Lube oil air coolers (gas turbine, gas compressors)
• Compressed gas intercoolers (process skids or automotive gas stations)
• Air preheaters for coal , fuel oil  or biomass boilers and waste incinerators
• Finned or bare tube coils in solvents recovery plants,fertilizer or urea

Therefore as Heat Transfer Specialist if you have to design and select an Air Cooled Heat Exchanger first criteria must be: how heavy is required duty? Is Design Pressure and Design Temperature in the range of conditions guaranteed by manufacturer? Is Material of Construction fitting corrosion issues created by involved fluids?

If you didn't cross any item of this check list you can get trouble later on: saving couple of thousands Euro could cost much more after...