Paul Mueller Company Academy

Just like a car or a computer, a heat exchanger needs regular maintenance to keep running at peak performance. Fortunately, plate heat exchangers (PHE) are generally easier to maintain than other types of heat exchangers, and problems tend to be easier to diagnose.

When doing scheduled maintenance, troubleshooting, or modifying your process, it’s important to know how to safely and quickly take your plate heat exchanger (PHE) apart and put it back together again. While the manufacturer’s word is always the bottom line on this subject, here are some simple guidelines that apply to nearly all PHE’s.

Heat exchangers all work by passing a hot fluid and a cold fluid across opposite sides of a piece of metal. The heat from one fluid passes across the metal (which is thermally conductive) into the other fluid without the fluids making contact. High fluid velocity, high turbulence, high surface area and a large temperature differential all contribute to more efficient heat transfer. However, different designs are more efficient than others depending on the application.