Plate-Fin Oil Cooler

Lytron frequently receives questions through its “Ask an Engineer” website form. A customer recently asked us the following question: “What custom heat exchanger technologies do you recommend for cooling oil?”

There are two heat exchanger technologies that we typically use for custom oil coolers: flat tube and plate-fin. Both are vacuum-brazed and high performance. If flat tube will meet your thermal and mechanical requirements, we will generally recommend it over plate-fin because flat tube typically costs less to manufacture.

Curved Flat Tube Heat Exchanger

In addition, our flat tube can be bent into a 3⁄8˝ (3 mm) inside radius without buckling, allowing us to manufacture a flat tube heat exchanger into a curved shape if necessary.

Tube-fin heat exchangers are also an option for cooling oil, but their performance is not as high as flat-tube or plate-fin heat exchangers.

For applications requiring the highest performance and the lightest weight, we will generally recommend plate-fin heat exchangers over flat tube heat exchangers. The majority of military and aerospace oil coolers being designed today use plate-fin technology. Shown in the image to the left is a liquid-to-liquid plate-fin oil cooler designed for a commercial airplane.