Heat exchanger can be called any apparatus regardless of what is its intended purpose: heating or cooling, evaporation or condensation.

Most refining industry processes utilize heat exchangers for feedstock heating, solvent production processes, reagents, catalysts, and others.

Target products or semi-finished products typically require cooling down to a temperature at which it is possible to store and transport them. If necessary heating or cooling of circulating fluids, with the purpose of reprocessing and heat utilization, is required, these reprocess are carried out in so-called (HEA heat exchanging apparatus) heat exchangers.

The heat exchangers comprise very significant part of the technological equipment in the petroleum refining and related industries. The average percentage of HEA exchanger’s on petrochemical refineries is 50 %.

Depending on the application, there are different requirements for industrial heat exchangers:

• To ensure the highest heat transfer coefficient with the smallest possible hydraulic resistance;
• To be compact and be constructed with the use of less material;
• Reliability and integrity, combined with its demountable properties and availability of heat exchange surface for mechanical cleaning;
• Unification of units and parts;
• Adaptability to mechanized production of a wide series of heat exchange surfaces with a different range of operating temperatures, pressures, etc...

The high efficiency of these devices can reduce fuel consumption and energy expenditure on a particular process, and also has a significant impact on technical and economic indicators.

Therefore, the study of the design and operation of these apparatus require particular attention.