Chapter 21-Mineral Oil Heat Transfer Fluids

BECAUSE OF COST AND POTENTIAL FOULING PROBLEMS, indirect process heating designs are usually preferred over direct, fuel-fired heating or individual electrically heated units [2]. For indirect process heating, heat transfer is usually accomplished by steam or by using a heat transfer fluid (HTF). Examples of HTFs include: petroleum based mineral oils, glycols, silicones and various synthetic fluids such as alkyleated aromatics, terphenyls, and mixtures of bi and diphenyls and their oxides. selected physical properties for a number of illstrative types of heat transfer fluids are provied in Table 1. These data show that there are notable differences in the physical properties of different classes of differences fluids within a class.