| Heat exchangers design includes the consideration of both the heat transfer rates between two fluids and the pumping power required to overcome fluid friction and push the fluids through the heat exchangers. In gas flow heat exchangers, the friction power limitations force the designer to select moderately low mass velocities. Low mass velocities with low thermal conductivities will result in low heat transfer rate per unit of the surface area. Thus a large surface area is a typical characteristic of a gas flow heat exchanger.; The problem of a large required area can be solved by using large area density which will lead to compact heat exchangers. The main target of this study is to provide full explanation of previous comparison methods of compact heat exchangers surfaces (plain, strip, louvered, wavy, pin, perforated and vortex) used in plate fin compact heat exchangers and to generalize these methods in order to identify the advantages and disadvantages of each type of geometry based on required size, entropy generation, pumping power, weight, and cost. |
