Geothermal Application of Heat Exchanger Design for Desalination Plants

Abstract

Heat exchangers can be a very costly part of modern geothermal plants for either electric or direct heat applications. To make maximum use of technology transfer from other industries, and to minimize as much as possible the need to duplicate previous work, this report has been prepared to provide an analytical review of the very extensive literature on heat exchangers developed by the Office of Saline Water (OSW). The OSW accomplished a very large amount of significant work related to the design and performance of large heat exchanger bundles and enhanced heat transfer surfaces. The exchanger design configurations that were studied include multistate flash plant condensers, vertical tube falling film and upward flow evaporators, and horizontal tube spray film evaporators This report summaries a study that has been prepared for the Department of Energy.