Compact heat exchangers

This chapter offers a concise review of a limited selection of topics involving an important family of heat exchangers called compact heat exchangers. Compact heat exchangers are thermal devices inherently present in many systems that feature an involvement of a single or multiple fluid streams exchanging thermal energy at differing temperatures but characterized by a large compactness. The concept of compactness refers to the magnitude of the heat transfer surface area scaled by the corresponding heat exchanger core volume. This chapter includes (i) descriptions of major types of compact heat exchangers, (ii) the construction details specific for compact heat exchangers, and (iii) design problems formulations.