Device for preventing choking in plate heat exchangers

Abstract

The present invention relates to a plate heat exchanger consisting of a stack of plates (21) clamped against each other in a sealed manner with a sealing joint being intercalated so as to create fluid flow channels between these plates, each plate comprising four holes forming with the holes of the other plates four manifolds (26,27), namely two inlet manifolds and two outlet manifolds, the ends of these manifolds being connected, on one side of the stack, to inlet or outlet pipework (28,29), so as to create two distinct fluid circuits, the joints enabling the channels to communicate with one or the other of the said fluid flow circuits, characterised in that at least one of the two inlet manifolds (26) is provided with a peripheral filtering cartridge (33), the mesh size of which is less than or equal to the distance between two contiguous plates (21), and is connected, at its opposite end to the inlet pipework (28), to the corresponding outlet pipework (29) by a pipe (31) controlled by a valve (32). Application to the auxiliary cooling circuits of power stations.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.