MECS® Fully-Welded Plate
Heat Exchanger
Our customized solutions maximize thermal efficiency and process savings. The MECS® ThermoZ™ Fully-Welded Plate Heat Exchanger recovers waste heat from hot gas streams, which may otherwise be stack-vented to the atmosphere. Recovered heat is then used within the plant to heat or preheat another gas stream for use in other processes. That allows plants to optimize energy and process efficiency, achieve significant savings and improve cost-effectiveness.
Backed by our decades of process experience, dedicated Elessent Clean technologies engineers can custom-design and furnish a MECS® ThermoZ™ gas-to-gas solution to meet your organization’s application needs, yielding optimum performance and energy efficiency.
MECS-ThermoZ™ air preheaters
A Modular Design for
Robust Performance
All MECS® gas-to-gas heat exchangers — including MECS® ThermoZ™ — feature a compact, modular design and long service life. The units are shop-fabricated to ensure quality, and trucked as individual blocks or complete modules. With their compact size and weight, installation and field setup are much simpler than with conventional shell and tube heat exchangers. And because the MECS® ThermoZ™ Fully-Welded Plate Heat Exchanger has no moving parts, it requires virtually no maintenance.
The MECS® ThermoZ™ Fully-Welded Plate Heat Exchanger is available in both cross-flow and counter-flow configurations. Our modular approach enables us to offer one of the most flexible and efficient flow arrangements available, as well as the flexibility to expand to accommodate future increases in capacity. This modular approach also enables significant design and operational customization, including the freedom to select distinct materials of construction for each heat transfer zone. Each module can be fabricated from a variety of heavy-gauge carbon steel and stainless steel plates, including COR-TEN®, 304L, 316L, and 309S. Heavy-duty MECS® ThermoZ™ units, built with robust materials, can deliver reliable and efficient performance in the most demanding, corrosive, and high-temperature applications, up to 1500°F (816°C).
Thanks to our heavy-duty design, robust fabrication, and the proper selection of construction materials, MECS® ThermoZ™ is delivering highly reliable performance in demanding applications such as:
- Fired heaters
- Boilers
- Air preheating
- Gas coolers
- Dryers
- Ovens
- Oxidizers
- DeNOx
Unique Design Features and Outstanding Efficiency
Our distinctive units feature a unique plate dimple design that achieves outstanding heat transfer efficiency. The MECS® ThermoZ™ Fully-Welded Plate Heat Exchanger consists of a series of stacked, parallel plates that provide a smooth, continuous gas flow path, for minimum air resistance and very low pressure drop. The heat transfer plates are completely seam-welded, to prevent cross-contamination. Spacing is achieved with a combination of raised and depressed conical dimples, which enable a uniform plate pitch and an improved heat transfer coefficient. The height of these dimples can be varied during shop fabrication to establish the desired plate spacing necessary to meet your specific performance parameters. Prior to shipment, each module is leak-tested and rated for 0.05% maximum leakage at the design differential pressure, ensuring straightforward start-up and long service life. The rigid, heavy-duty frame assemblies may be parallel-bundled for additional capacity, and are easy to lift and install.
The MECS® ThermoZ™ Fully-Welded Plate Heat Exchanger design offers additional advantages over conventional heat exchangers:
- Generous plate clearances allow for ease of inspection
- Ability to inspect and clean both sides of the exchanger
- Outstanding heat exchange efficiency due to plate dimple design
- No tubes to vibrate or to cause acoustic resonance
- Lower surface area requirements than traditional shell and tube heat exchanger designs
- Rigid heavy-duty frame assembly for long service life
- Optimum-h™ Technology to Prevent Corrosion
When gas temperatures and dew point conditions require maximum corrosion protection from cold spots, the Optimum-h™ System can raise the minimum metal temperature near condensing applications and allow for less expensive materials of construction. Unlike most other attempts to reduce cold spots in heat exchangers, the Optimum-h™ System does not increase the resistance to heat flow through the gas separation plates, and thus does not reduce the overall effectiveness of the heat exchanger.