thePetroStreet

Hi,
I tried to design an heat exchanger using HTRI and HTFS, both shows same MTD but there is difference in no. of tubes and heat transfer coefficients.
Usually HTRI will show less heat transfer coefficient but more no. of tubes while it is vice versa for Aspen HTFS.
Now question is which one is reliable?
If anyone has used both softwares, please share his experience.

first check your inputs, because both are very much reliable softwares, if installed updated ones. as far as experience is concerned, I found HTRI to be more accurate in some shell and tube cases, but not very much different from HTFS/TASC outputs. HTRI iterate for results incrementally, where as other commercial software use average values along co-relations for results.
in short there will be very less difference in both software outputs, anyhow for shell and tube (especially thermosyphon reboilers) HTRI results will be more reliable than HTFS/TASC.