Alfa Laval has introduced the TS45, its largest semi-welded plate heat exchanger, for high-capacity and higher-pressure duties across industrial heat pumps, thermal energy storage, carbon capture, and chemical processing.
Using an extra-large plate format and semi-welded cassette construction, the new platform increases heat-transfer capacity while retaining the compact footprint and service access associated with plate heat exchangers.
Alfa Laval is targeting duties that have traditionally relied on large shell-and-tube equipment, including industrial heating and cooling systems, sulphuric acid production, carbon dioxide processes, and energy projects where substantial thermal loads must be managed within restricted plant space.
Within a semi-welded exchanger, pairs of plates are welded together to form cassettes. One fluid passes through the welded channels, while the second travels through gasketed channels between the cassettes, providing greater containment for a demanding refrigerant or process fluid without preventing the exchanger from being opened for service.
Corrugated plates create a large heat-transfer surface and promote turbulent flow, allowing close temperature approaches within a comparatively compact unit. Performance varies with pressure, temperature, fluid properties, fouling behaviour, allowable pressure drop, and the plate arrangement selected for the duty.
The larger TS45 format extends that operating range into higher-capacity installations, although equipment selection will still depend on material compatibility, pressure integrity, access, cleaning requirements, and the behaviour of the process over a complete operating cycle.
Industrial heat pumps represent one of the principal target applications. Large systems recover low-grade heat from processes, cooling water, data centres, wastewater, or other sources and raise it to a temperature suitable for heating, drying, hot water, or district-energy networks.
The heat exchanger influences both efficiency and reliability because pressure drop increases compressor or pumping energy, while fouling reduces thermal performance. Refrigerant choice also changes pressure, materials, seal selection, and plant-safety requirements.
Larger energy projects raise thermal duty
Thermal storage systems require equipment capable of moving large quantities of heat into and out of water, phase-change materials, molten salts, or other storage media. Close temperature approaches improve the amount of usable energy recovered, but they also demand sufficient surface area and stable flow distribution.
Carbon capture plants add substantial heating and cooling duties around solvent absorption, regeneration, compression, and heat recovery. The exchanger must tolerate the selected process chemistry and remain accessible for maintenance, since declining thermal performance increases the energy consumed for each tonne of carbon dioxide captured.
Sulphuric acid and other chemical processes present severe corrosion and containment requirements. Plate and gasket materials must be selected against concentration, temperature, impurities, flow velocity, and shutdown conditions, as an alloy suitable during normal operation may become vulnerable when the chemistry changes during cleaning or start-up.
Semi-welded construction reduces the number of gasketed joints around the more aggressive or high-pressure fluid. The service side remains accessible, although gasket material, compression, ageing, replacement intervals, and storage of spares continue to influence long-term reliability.
Plate exchangers can be sensitive to channel blockage where fluids contain solids, fibres, crystals, or deposits. Filtration, flow velocity, cleaning strategy, and plate geometry must therefore reflect the actual process rather than ideal clean-fluid calculations.
A larger unit may reduce the number of exchangers required for a duty, simplifying some pipework, controls, and foundations. Concentrating more capacity within one item also increases the effect of an outage, making redundancy, isolation, lifting access, and maintenance planning more important.
Shell-and-tube equipment remains well established for high-temperature, high-pressure, dirty, or heavily regulated services. It offers familiar design and inspection routes across a wide range of mechanical conditions, so the TS45 will compete where compact size, close temperature approach, and serviceable plate surfaces create a measurable operating benefit.
Manufacturing the larger plates and cassettes requires close control over pressing, welding, alignment, surface condition, dimensional accuracy, and pressure testing. Variation across a large plate can alter channel geometry, fluid distribution, sealing, and the ability to compress the assembled pack uniformly.
Factory quality must be matched by plant installation. Pipe loads, uneven foundations, incorrect tightening, contamination during construction, and poor venting can all affect performance or damage an exchanger that met its specification before shipment.
Pumps, control valves, sensors, bypasses, vents, drains, and software need to maintain stable flow across changing loads while protecting the equipment from excessive pressure, freezing, thermal shock, or unstable operation. Those controls become more demanding when a single unit covers a broad operating range.
Energy efficiency also needs to be assessed across the complete system rather than through heat-transfer coefficient alone. A design that achieves a very close temperature approach at excessive pressure drop can shift energy consumption into the pumps, reducing the net benefit.
As industrial decarbonisation increases demand for heat recovery, electrification, storage, and carbon capture, heat exchangers are carrying larger and more variable duties. Thermal systems cannot reach their intended performance when the core equipment is undersized, fouled, difficult to maintain, or poorly integrated.
The TS45 extends Alfa Laval’s semi-welded platform into that larger project class. Operating evidence will establish its performance across pressure integrity, fouling, gasket life, cleaning, availability, and whole-life cost when compared with established shell-and-tube and alternative plate designs.
