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Old 01-23-11, 12:26 AM   #19
strider3700
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the math can be done.

What's the incoming temp and desired outgoing temp of the fluid you're heating, what is the incoming temp of the fluid doing the heating, what is the flow rate of both? Somewhere I found a heat exchanger calculator that will work out the necessary sqft of surface area necessary to achieve it and it will be able to tell you the outgoing temp of the heating fluid as well.

I recently was looking for a double wall flat plate that could take 50F to 110F using 140F water on the other side both flowing at 4 gallons/min The recommended model had 12.4 sqft of surface area and weighed 16.8 pounds. Not a small or cheap thing.

in this case it looks like the inside pipe is 1/2" so unless I screwed my math up you need about 92 feet worth of inside pipe to get the same surface area. You can improve things though by increasing the flow rate of the heating fluid. As well my calc was for a double wall with airspace. Single wall should be more efficient I still would be shocked if it's less then 50' though. 60F in 1 pass is not easy to do.
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