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STUDY GUIDE · GKU 3

Heat transfer study guide (Chemical Engineering)

Almost every stream in a chemical plant is heated or cooled at least once, and the heat exchangers, reboilers, condensers and furnaces that do it are a large share of the equipment bill. This guide teaches the three ways heat moves and then puts them to work. Conduction comes first, through walls, pipe insulation and fins, written as thermal resistances. Convection follows, forced and natural, with the dimensionless groups and correlations that give the film coefficient, and then boiling and condensation, where the coefficients are largest. Radiation covers furnaces and hot surfaces. A section on the heat equation and transient problems ends the first part with batch heating in a jacketed vessel. The second part builds the overall coefficient with fouling, surveys the equipment, and designs exchangers by the LMTD and effectiveness–NTU methods.

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Structured by the official ETEC subject standard for this topic: every listed topic and learning outcome, with formulas, figures and worked examples. The full sections are available to members in the app.

SKU 3.1 · Modes of heat transfer

  1. Conduction, insulation and fins

    Fourier's law, thermal resistances for plane walls and cylinders in series, how insulation works and when it backfires (critical radius), and how fins extend a surface.

  2. Forced and natural convection

    Newton's law of cooling, what sets the film coefficient, the dimensionless groups, and the standard correlations for flow inside tubes, over plates and in natural convection.

  3. Boiling and condensation

    The boiling curve and its regimes, the critical heat flux that limits reboilers and evaporators, and film condensation on tubes as Nusselt described it.

  4. Radiation heat transfer

    Thermal radiation from black and grey surfaces, emissivity and Kirchhoff's law, exchange between a body and its surroundings and between parallel surfaces, view factors, radiation shields and the radiation coefficient.

  5. The heat equation: steady and unsteady problems

    Writing the conduction equation and its boundary conditions, steady solutions with heat generation, the Biot number and lumped cooling, and batch heating of a stirred vessel through a jacket or coil.

SKU 3.2 · Heat exchanger design

  1. Overall heat transfer coefficient and fouling

    Building from the two film coefficients, the wall and the fouling resistances, which resistance controls, and what typical values look like.

  2. Heat transfer equipment

    Double-pipe and shell-and-tube exchangers, plate exchangers and air coolers, condensers, reboilers and evaporators, boilers and fired heaters: how each is built, where it is used, and which fluid goes where.

  3. Heat exchanger design: LMTD and effectiveness–NTU

    Sizing an exchanger from its duty with the log-mean temperature difference and the multipass correction , rating an existing one with the effectiveness–NTU method, and allowing for fouling.

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