Wide Gap Plate Heat Exchanger

A wide-gap plate heat exchanger uses plates with a deeper corrugation profile than a standard plate, creating a significantly larger gap between adjacent plates in the flow channel. Where a standard gasketed plate typically has a channel gap of a few millimetres, a wide-gap plate opens that gap up considerably, large enough to pass fibres, particulates, and viscous or pulpy material that would block or foul a conventional narrow-gap plate pack.

Standard plate heat exchangers rely on a narrow, highly turbulent flow channel to achieve high thermal efficiency, but that same narrow channel is easily blocked by fibres, solids, or highly viscous fluids. Wide-gap plates trade some thermal efficiency and compactness for a flow path that stays clear under these conditions, avoiding the frequent shutdowns and cleaning cycles a standard plate pack would need on the same duty.

The frame and gasketing principle is otherwise the same as a standard gasketed plate heat exchanger: the plate pack is clamped between carrying and guiding bars with elastomer gaskets sealing each plate, so the unit can still be opened for inspection and cleaning, and capacity can still be adjusted by adding or removing plates.

Typical duties include fruit pulp and juice with fibre content, pulp and paper stock, wastewater and effluent with suspended solids, sludge, and any process fluid where particulate size or fibre content rules out a standard narrow-gap plate.

SRJ manufactures wide-gap plates on dedicated tooling designed for these enlarged channel geometries, matched to the frame and port sizing of the equivalent standard range so wide-gap and standard plates can be specified within a familiar frame platform.