Xchanger Suite®
Rate, simulate, and design heat transfer equipment
Xchanger Suite®—considered to be the most advanced thermal process design and simulation software—rates, simulates, and/or designs a variety of heat transfer equipment. HTRI’s calculation methods are backed by over half a century of applied research and data collected on industrially relevant heat transfer equipment. Based on the results of this ongoing effort, we update our methods to meet your evolving engineering needs.
All Xchanger Suite components are highly flexible, allowing rigorous specification of the exchanger geometry. This capability makes the best use of HTRI’s proprietary heat transfer and pressure drop correlations and allows the most accurate performance predictions possible for all exchangers.
Features
- Modern user interface that allows multiple case files (containing both text and graphical inputs/outputs) to be open at the same time.
- Fully incremental calculation modules compute localized heat transfer and pressure drop using local fluid properties.
- Extensive output reports provide detailed results, including local profiles of all important parameters.
- Comprehensive help provides background information, graphs, explanation of input panels and output reports, user tips, and more.
- Graphs and scale drawings provide in-depth visualization of calculated results.
- Extensive, user-extendable databank for materials of construction enables faster input of complex information.
- Software can interface with
- process simulators
- physical property databanks
- mechanical design programs
- Exchanger Optimizer
- integrated engineering software
- user-written applications in Microsoft® Excel® and other programming languages
- CAPE-OPEN compliant applications
- Installation includes VMGThermo®, an extensive and rigorous fluid physical property generator from Schlumberger.
- Import of input files from HTFS® (shell-and-tube and plate-fin exchangers), Honeywell’s UniSim® Heat Exchangers (shell-and-tube and plate-fin exchangers), and Aspen Exchanger Design & Rating (shell-and-tube and air-cooled exchangers) allow modeling within Xchanger Suite.
- Exchanger Optimizer, installed separately, can be launched from within Xchanger Suite to generate comprehensive cost assessments and validate designs based on ASME code calculations.
Components
Xace
Rate, simulate, and design air coolers and economizers, including natural draft (fans off) and forced draft conditions. Xace includes vendor fan selection calculations and options to simulate the effect of flow and temperature maldistribution.
Xist Xhpe Xjpe
Rate, simulate, and design virtually any type of shell-and-tube exchanger, including kettles, hairpins, thermosiphons, reflux condensers, and falling film evaporators. Xist supports all standard TEMA exchanger types, and includes integrated tools for flow-induced vibration calculations and tube layout design.
Xpfe
Simulate and design multi-stream axial and crossflow plate-fin exchangers using an incremental model with research-based heat transfer and pressure drop correlations. Xpfe contains graphical layout tools that make even complex stream arrangements easy to create.
Xphe
Rate, simulate, and design plate-and-frame exchangers using user-defined plate types or plates selected from an internal manufacturers’ databank. Xphe contains a port maldistribution model that calculates the flow through each plate channel.
Xspe
Rate and simulate single-phase spiral plate exchangers using an incremental model with HTRI-validated heat transfer and pressure drop correlations. Xspe models cocurrent and countercurrent spiral flow (Type I exchangers).
Xvib
Calculate flow-induced vibration for a tube in a shell-and-tube exchanger using a rigorous finite element based algorithm. Xvib considers fluidelastic instability and vortex shedding mechanisms for both straight tubes and U-tubes.
Xfh
Simulate the performance of cylindrical and box heaters. Xfh uses a Hottel zoning method to calculate localized radiant and process side performance. Additional combustion and convection section modules allow evaluation of a complete process fired heater. For single-zone modeling, use Xfh® Ultra, our general-purpose fired heater program.
Works With...
Xchanger Suite works with many major software packages for physical properties, process simulation, mechanical design, integrated engineering, and fan selection.
| Software | Company |
|---|---|
| Aspen Plus* | Aspen Technology, Inc. |
| Aspen HYSYS | Aspen Technology, Inc. |
| Petro-SIM | KBC Advanced Technologies, Inc. |
| PPDS | TUV NEL Ltd. |
| PRO/II | AVEVA Software, LLC |
| ProMax | Bryan Research & Engineering, LLC |
| REFPROP | NIST |
| Simulis Thermodynamics* | ProSim S.A. |
| UniSim Design | Honeywell International Inc. |
| VMGThermo (distributed with Xchanger Suite) |
Schlumberger |
*via CAPE-OPEN
| Software | Company |
|---|---|
| Aspen Plus* | Aspen Technology, Inc. |
| Aspen HYSYS | Aspen Technology, Inc. |
| Petro-SIM | KBC Advanced Technologies, Inc. |
| PRO/II | AVEVA Software, LLC |
| ProMax* | Bryan Research & Engineering, LLC |
| ProSim Plus* | ProSim S.A. |
| UniSim Design | Honeywell International Inc. |
| Symmetry | Schlumberger |
*via CAPE-OPEN
| Software | Company |
|---|---|
| Aspen EDR | Aspen Technology, Inc. |
| AutoPIPE Vessel (Microprotol) | Bentley Systems, Inc. |
| COMPRESS Exchanger | Codeware, Inc. |
| MT-MECH | MT3 SOLUTION srls |
| PASSAT | NTP Truboprovod |
| PVElite | Hexagon PPM |
| RCSWin | RCS |
| NEXTGEN | Sant'Ambrogio Servizi Industriali s.r.l. |
| Vessel Exchanger Software (VES) | Red-Bag B.V. |
| WIN_Shell | SSE GmbH |
Integrated Engineering Software
| Software | Company |
|---|---|
| Aspen Zyqad | Aspen Technology, Inc. |
| AXSYS.Process | Bentley Systems, Inc. |
| COMOS PT | Siemens AG |
Fan selection software from the following companies is embedded in Xace
- Axial Fans Int s.r.l.
- Cofimco S.p.A.
- Howden Cooling Fans
- Hudson Products Corporation
- The Moore Company
System Requirements
The following are recommended to run Xchanger Suite 9.1 and eLibrary 2.1 successfully:
- Microsoft® Windows® 8.1, Windows 10, Server 2012, Server 2016, Server 2019 or Server 2022
- 32- or 64-bit processor
- 2 GB RAM
- Approximately 2 GB hard drive space
HTRI recommends a 2 GHz or faster processor with 4 GB RAM, as well as an XGA or better graphics adapter (1024 × 768 resolution).
What’s new with Version 9.1
Changes in this release include the following:
- Method improvements
- Heat transfer and pressure drop for forced vs. natural draft in air coolers
- Shellside/tubeside film boiling heat transfer
- Shellside heat transfer for both horizontal and vertical unbaffled shells
- Shellside critical heat flux
- Mixture shellside condensation
- Significant enhancements
- Electric heater option in Xist
- Automatic tube removal for deresonating baffles in Xist
- Simple to detailed piping conversion in Xist
- Fouling estimation option in Xist
- Bundle layout drawing in navigation pane in Xace
- API 661 specification sheet input panel in Xace
- Acoustic vibration check for economizers
- Other notable improvements
- Exporting the pass arrangement drawing independently of the tube layout dawing in Xist
- Improvements to use of property packages to use a single package across multiple process streams
- Additional options in Program Settings for CAPE-OPEN to allow control over stream naming and extensive logging options