New Compact Heat Exchanger for Dirty Fluids

Alfa Laval’s (Sweden) new WideGap100 gasketed plate heat exchanger combines an exceptionally high resistance to fouling and clogging with maximum heat transfer efficiency and compact size. WideGap100 is the smallest plate heat exchanger on the market that has been specially designed for handling media with coarse particles, fibres and solids.

Thick, dirty fluids clog up heat exchangers and cause costly downtime in many industries, for example ethanol, bio-based chemicals, pulp &paper and waste water treatment.

Alfa Laval WideGap heat exchangers offer a solution to this problem. Thanks to the wide distance between its plates and a highly turbulent flow, a WideGap is much less susceptible to clogging than other heat exchangers. The wide channels let dirty fluids pass freely through the heat exchanger, and clogging is avoided. The special herringbone corrugation pattern of the plates causes high turbulence, which further helps reduce fouling but also increases heat transfer.

The new WideGap100 is designed for applications with small flows and has a port diameter of 100 mm. This makes WideGap100 the smallest wide gap type heat exchanger on the market.

Being a plate heat exchanger, WideGap100 has a much higher thermal efficiency than heat exchangers based on other technologies. A WideGap100 has a counter-current flow pattern, allowing it to operate with crossing temperatures, and its high turbulence results in a close temperature approach. This means WideGap100 is very good for all types of heating, cooling and heat recovery duties.

WideGap 100 uses Alfa Laval’s ClipGrip gaskets, offering a quick and totally glue-free mounting thanks to its patented attachments. The ClipGrip gasket design allows secure attachment to the plate, thereby preventing gaskets from creeping out of their grooves as well as avoiding plate pack misalignment and leaks. All this significantly reduces spare parts consumption and time for re-gasketing.

The new WideGap100 complements the larger 200 and 350 models in the same range.