HTRI 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, graphical user interface that allows the user to have multiple case files (containing both text and graphical inputs/outputs) open at the same time.
- Fully incremental calculation modules compute localized heat transfer and pressure drop using local fluid properties.
- Includes VMGThermo, an extensive and rigorous fluid physical property generator from Virtual Materials Group, Inc.
- Extensive output reports provide detailed results, including local profiles of all important parameters.
- Comprehensive online 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.
- Includes extensive, user-extendable databank for materials of construction.
- Interfaces to
- 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
- Imports shell-and-tube and plate-fin exchanger input files from HTFS®, Honeywell’s UniSim® Heat Exchangers, and Aspen Exchanger Design & Rating products.
- Exchanger Optimizer can now 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 plain 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) |
Virtual Materials Group, Inc. |
*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 8.2 and eLibrary 2.1 successfully:
- Microsoft® Windows® 8.1, Windows 10, Server 2012, Server 2016, or Server 2019
- 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 8.2
HTRI research has contributed to several changes in this version, including
- an improved model for pressure drop in window flow
- an X-shell delta correction method
- a subcooling monitor
- turndown limit messaging for vertical thermosiphons
- flow regime maps for straight pipe elements when selecting detailed piping options
Other improvements to the user interface make it even easier for you to use the software, such as
- the option to specify air-cooler fans as on or off
- a Minimize piping input field and logic to control when the program modifies nozzles between units in series
- the option to specify finned U-bends
- extended capabilities for property generation, improved interpolation, and removal of the three-point property requirement