Review of Corrugated Plate Design for Plate Heat Exchangers

Heat exchange systems are key technologies that are widely adopted in industrial production and play an important role in many fields such as petrochemicals, aerospace, and integrated circuits. The plate heat exchanger, a crucial component in the heat transfer process, holds significant importance for design optimization to attain optimal heat transfer efficiency, given its popularity in the industrial sector. The heat exchanger plate is the most important part of the plate heat exchanger; different corrugated shapes of the heat exchanger plate have different effects on the heat transfer effect. This paper discusses common types of plate heat exchangers, including V-shaped corrugated plate heat exchangers and pillow-plate heat exchangers. It emphasizes the impact of corrugation angle, corrugation pitch, and corrugation height on the performance of V-shape corrugated plate heat exchangers, as well as the influence of weld spot distance and weld spot shape on the characteristics of pillow-plate heat exchangers. For V-shaped corrugated heat exchange plates, the ideal corrugation angle is between 60 and 70. Heat transfer efficiency steadily declines with increasing corrugation height and pitch. For pillow-plate heat exchangers, an increase in either the horizontal or vertical distance of the weld spots will reduce the heat transfer efficiency. The heat transfer efficiency of the heat exchange plate is optimal when the weld spot shape is Elliptical 2.