Shell and Tube Exchangers Shell and Tube Exchangers Shell and Tube Exchangers are common throughout the chemical process industries for heat economy.
Many tubes go from a header on one side to a header on the other.
The other fluid is in the space outside the tubes. Hot streams exchange energy with colder streams so that the thermal energy of the hot streams is not wasted. Furthermore, companies are not allowed to discharge hot streams that can damage the environment, so removing heat from a waste hot stream is important. The colors in this sketch are supposed to represent heat gradients. Red is hottest, and yellow is coolest.