Heat exchanger for the automotive sector

Shell and tube heat exchangers to perform the heating and cooling of PVC paste

Over the last 40 years, SACOME has been supplying thousands of heat exchangers to the worldwide leading companies in the automotive sector. On a normal basis, these tubular heat exchangers are small sized equipment intended to keep the set temperature of the different primer layers used to paint the bodywork of the cars. SACOME is not limited to this common application and has the engineering capabilities for the design of any type of shell and tube heat exchanger whatever its requirements.

A great example of the above mentioned is the recent manufacturing of two industrial heat exchangers to perform the heating and cooling of PVC paste. It’s a high viscosity product with which SACOME wasn’t very experienced at the time. In addition, a design pressure of 125 barg was required in the tubeside, which meant having to test the equipment at 187.5 barg and having to fit custom designed headers. However, SACOME contributed their knowledge and engineering capabilities to find an optimal solution and eventually, the shell and tube heat exchangers have been installed successfully.

Industrial heat exchangers having seamless inner tubes as well as seamless outer shell

Focusing on the solution and taking into account the comments of the customer, who is well aware of this product, SACOME decided to consider a multitube heat exchanger with very low product velocities to keep the pressure drop as low as possible, since this was a specific requirement of the project and there were no minimum speed limitations as it usually occurs for these applications. Specifically, the SACOME experts chose their industrial multitube heat exchanger (I-TFM-I heat exchanger) having seamless inner tubes as well as seamless outer shell. In addition, as the process temperatures were quite low, in this case the expansion joint was not required to be fitted in the outer shell, due to the low process temperatures.

Another key point was the choice of the type of gaskets since the client had previously encountered many issues with similar equipment because of an inadequate choice of these. In this sense, SACOME managed to define the material and an appropriate gasket design to prevent the client from having this kind of problems again.

In short, this is another project in which SACOME has carried out a thorough engineering work and has achieved an optimal solution in a very specific application.