Patent ID: 7266976

Claim:
A method of transferring heat from a refrigerant to a cooled fluid, said method comprising: (a) introducing the refrigerant into an internal volume defined within a shell, said internal volume having a height-to-width ratio greater than 1; (b) introducing the cooled fluid into a plate-fin core disposed within the internal volume of the shell; (c) transferring heat from the cooled fluid in the core to the refrigerant in the shell via indirect heat exchange; and (d) withdrawing a predominantly liquid stream of the refrigerant from a liquid outlet defined in the shell at a lower elevation than the bottom of the core, wherein the ratio of the vertical distance between the bottom of the core and the liquid outlet to the maximum height of the internal volume is greater than about 0.15, said core being spaced from the top and bottom of the shell, said core defining a plurality of generally upwardly extending shell-side flow passageways for receiving said refrigerant, each of said passageways defining a downwardly facing lower refrigerant inlet and an upwardly facing upper refrigerant outlet.