Engineering & Design of Pillow Plate Heat Exchangers
Pillow plate heat exchangers offer design freedoms that conventional shell-and-tube heat exchangers cannot match: flexible geometries, compact footprints, direct integration into vessels and reactors, and superior cleanability. This flexibility is also their challenge – because precise thermodynamic design requires more than running calculation software.
Our engineers design every heat exchanger based on your specific process conditions. Not based on approximations.
Single-Embossed Pillow Plates (SP Plates)
SP plates are fabricated from a thinner top sheet and a thicker base sheet. The base sheet forms the vessel wall directly – making the SP plate both a structural element and a heat transfer surface simultaneously.
We calculate SP plates for:
- Vessel walls and heads with temperature control requirements (heating/cooling)
- Direct contact temperature control of solid materials: food products, bulk materials
- Applications with high hygiene and cleanability requirements
Double-Embossed Pillow Plates (DP Plates)
DP plates are fabricated from two sheets of equal thickness and can be used in direct process contact – without complex installation.
We design DP plates for:
- Cooling and heating baths (immersion of individual plates or plate systems)
- Fluidized bed reactors and dryers (low fouling tendency, high cleanability)
- Stirred tanks: baffles, radiation shields
- Thermoil-heated industrial ovens: uniform surface heat radiation
What Our Engineering Delivers in Practice
For every project, our engineers define the following based on your process requirements:
- Material selection: DC01, DC04, 1.4301, 1.4307, 1.4404, 1.4571, 1.4462, 1.4539, 254 SMO, and others
- Sheet thicknesses: 0.6 mm to 3.0 mm – depending on pressure level and application
- Pressure design: Burst pressures >450 bar verifiable; calculations per AD 2000 Code S5 or ASME Code
- Temperature levels: PS >70 bar and TS >400 °C achievable
- Fluid groups: single-phase liquids, superheated gases, evaporating media (natural refrigerants, HFCs), condensing media (steam)
For operators who must simultaneously ensure efficiency, compliance, and operational safety, analytical engineering depth is not optional.