Plurality of tubular heat exchanger modules

Claim 1

A tubular heat exchanger including: a. a housing having opposing ends, said housing having a first opening at the one end thereof and a second opening at the other end thereof and defining therebetween a chamber through which a vertical flow of a first fluid passes between the first and second openings in said housing; b. a plurality of heat exchange modules disposed within said housing in a spaced vertical array, each module comprising a pair of laterally spaced tube sheets with aligned apertures therein and a plurality of longitudinally disposed heat exchange tubes extending between the aligned apertures in the spaced apart tube sheets; c. a plurality of support beams disposed so as to extend transversely across and between the spaced heat exchange modules such that the tube sheets of each module have a lower lateral edge slidably abutting against a subadjacent support beam and an upper lateral edge slidably abutting against a superadjacent support beam; d. inlet means to said housing for a second fluid at one end thereof and outlet means to said housing for the second fluid at the opposite end thereof, the inlet means and outlet means opening to the tubes of the upper-most heat exchange module and to the tubes of the lower-most heat exchange module; and e. header conduits interconnecting the lateral ends of vertically adjacent heat exchange modules to permit the second fluid to flow from the inlet means to the outlet means along a serpentine flow path through the tubes of one module and thence through the tubes of the next adjacent module in heat exchange relationship with the first fluid flowing through said housing, each header conduit comprising a substantially U-shaped open-ended duct rigidly attached to the tube sheets of the adjacent heat exchange modules that it interconnects and spaced from said housing and the support beams that it neighbors so as to provide a gap on each side of the header conduit into which the header conduit may contract or expand longitudinally as the tube sheets to which it is attached slide across the support beams which they abut.