No two industrial processes or production lines are the same. Companies and their engineers spend huge amounts of time and money developing the most efficient and practical way to achieve their individual objectives, whether pasteurizing dairy products or treating industrial wastes. Specifying a standard, off the shelf piece of equipment for a customized process can be therefore be counter-productive, but is a practice which is nevertheless still common — despite the fact that bespoke can often be a more cost-effective option.
In the same way that a bespoke suit from the top tailors of Midtown Manhattan will fit the wearer better than an off-the-peg design from the local supermarket, a heat exchanger which has been specifically designed to fit in with the rest of your process will perform better than one which has been made to a pre-set design. In a worst-case scenario, a heat exchanger which has been developed for one type of application – such as cooling food products – would be completely unsuitable for another, like evaporating sewage sludge.