Research Paper A comparative study on the shell and tube and gasket-plate heat exchangers: The economic viewpoint Hassan Hajabdollahi a , Mehdi Naderi b, *, Sima Adimi c a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Vali-e-Asr University of Rafsanjan, Rafsanjan, Iran b Department of Mechanical Engineering, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran c Department of Mechanical Engineering, Alborz Campus University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran H I G H L I G H T S • Presenting an efficient method for analyzing and optimizing two kinds of heat exchangers. • Comparison of total cost between gasket plate and shell and tube heat exchangers. • Performing sensitivity analysis for the change in design parameters at the optimal point. ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 15 May 2015 Accepted 31 August 2015 Available online 28 September 2015 Keywords: Shell and tube heat exchanger Gasket plate heat exchanger Genetic algorithm Total cost A B ST R AC T This paper presents a comparative study for optimization of gasket-plate and shell and tube heat ex- changers. Total cost of the system (the capital and operating costs) is selected as objective function and Genetic Algorithm is applied to find the minimum of it for each case. Seven design parameters (deci- sion variables) are used for gasket-plate while nine design parameters are selected for shell and tube heat exchanger. The optimum results show a noticeable improvement in the total cost in comparison with the results presented in the literature. For example, 35% improvement in the total cost is observed in the case of shell and tube compared with the literature. Furthermore, the comparison of the optimum results in the case of gasket-plate shows 13% improvement in the total cost compared with shell and tube heat exchanger with the same operating condition. Finally, sensitivity analysis for the change in the design parameters at the optimum point for each heat exchanger is performed and their results are reported. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Economic issue is one of the most important factors for heat ex- changer design. Shell and tube heat exchangers are widely used in many different industries (Power plants, oil and gas industries, process industries, refrigeration, HVAC etc.). Moreover, gasket- plate heat exchangers were introduced to simplify the task of cleaning in food industry. Remarkably the application range of the heat exchangers has been developed. Currently, in the special and appropriate conditions, these heat exchangers can be a good alter- native for shell and tube exchangers. There are a lot of efforts for optimization of different types of heat exchangers with various ob- jectives and decision variables using the various methods. For example, Hajabdollahi et al. performed the optimization of differ- ent types of heat exchangers including the shell and tube [1–3], condenser [4], plate fin [5–7], fin tube [8,9], rotary regenerator [10] as well as gasket plate [11] by using different algorithms includ- ing the Genetic Algorithm [1–11], Particle Swarm Algorithm [4], Firefly Algorithm [3] and by considering the different objective func- tions including total annual cost [1–6,8,9,11], effectiveness [2,3,5,7,8,10,11], pressure drop [7,10], exergy efficiency [1,6], entropy generation [6] and temperature approach [9]. Shetna et al. studied the production of optimum thermal generation networks in terms of temperature distribution and cost [12]. Gut and Pinto used screen- ing model to optimize gasket-plate heat exchangers [13,14]. Khalifeh- Soltan et al. achieved shell and tube condensers optimum annual cost by changing the baffle spacing [15]. Eryener studied shell and tube heat exchanger by using baffle distance modeling and eco- nomic optimization [16]. Arsenyeva and colleagues used a mathematical model to optimize the area of gasket plate heat ex- changers [17]. Naderi et al. studied technical and economic feasibility to use gasket-plate heat exchanger in central heating [18]. Biniciogullari performed a comparative study between shell and tube and gasket-plate heat exchangers and concluded that under ap- propriate conditions, such as moderate temperatures and low pressures, gasket-plate heat exchangers had better performance [19]. The main goal of this study is modeling and economic optimi- zation of the gasket plate and shell and tube heat exchangers using * Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 912 8840868; fax: +98-3431312408. E-mail address: m.n.mechanic.engineering@gmail.com (M. Naderi). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.08.110 1359-4311/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Applied Thermal Engineering 92 (2016) 271–282 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Applied Thermal Engineering journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng