**1. Introduction**

Heat exchangers are devices used to transfer energy between two fluids at different temper‐ atures. They improve energy efficiency, because the energy already within the system can be transferred to another part of the process, instead of just being pumped out and wasted. In the new era of sustainability, the growing urgency to save energy and reduce overall environ‐ mental impacts has placed greater emphasis on the use of heat exchangers with better thermal efficiency. In this new scenario, the plate heat exchanger can play an important role.

A plate heat exchanger is a compact type of heat exchanger that uses a series of thin plates to transfer heat between two fluids. There are four main types of PHE: gasketed, brazed, welded, and semi-welded. The plate-and-frame or gasketed plate heat exchanger essentially consists of a pack of thin rectangular plates sealed around the edges by gaskets and held together in a frame (Figure 1). Plate heat exchangers were first introduced in 1923 for milk pasteurization applications, but are now used in many applications in the chemical, petroleum, HVAC, refrigeration, dairy, pharmaceutical, beverage, liquid food and health care sectors. This is due to the unique advantages of PHEs, such as flexible thermal design (plates can be simply added or removed to meet different heat duty or processing requirements), ease of cleaning to maintain strict hygiene conditions, good temperature control (necessary in cryogenic appli‐ cations), and better heat transfer performance.
