Heat exchanger types

Every cleaning decision downstream depends on what the unit is. A gasketed plate pack can be opened and every plate inspected; a brazed pack of the same duty cannot be opened at all, and once circulation stops working there is no next step but replacement. A shell and tube with a removable bundle can have its shell side cleaned properly; a fixed tube sheet unit never can. Those are not preferences, they are properties of the equipment, and they set the boundaries of what any contractor can offer.

The second thing the unit decides is what evidence a clean can produce. Circulation restores duty and tells you nothing about the surfaces it has just cleaned. Opening a unit costs days instead of hours and returns something a circulation clean never can: plate thickness, crack testing, tube wall data. Where a cross-leak is suspected. Raw product reaching pasteurised product, refrigerant reaching water, oil reaching a cooling circuit. Only the second answers the question.

Which is why an enquiry that names the make, the model and the plate or tube count gets a method and a price, and one that says a heat exchanger needs cleaning gets a survey. The four types below cover the overwhelming majority of industrial duty in the UK.