Heat exchanger

The invention relates to a heat exchanger for fluids, in particular hydraulic oil, having a housing in which fluid conduits and coolant conduits alternate with one another, in which the housing has an inlet for hot fluid, an outlet for cooled fluid, and one inlet and one outlet for the coolant.

Such heat exchangers are versatile in use. The disadvantage of the known heat exchangers is that the hot fluid, such as hydraulic oil, before entering or after leaving the heat exchanger must be passed through a separate filter device, to remove foreign bodies from the fluid.

The object of the invention is to overcome this disadvantage and to attain cleaner cooled fluid in a structurally simple way. A heat exchanger of the type defined at the outset and embodied according to the invention is distinguished in that in the housing, a central cylindrical chamber is provided, which is lined on its circumference by a filter, by way of which the inflowing hot fluid or the outflowing cooled fluid enters or emerges from the fluid conduits.

In this way, it is attained that immediately before or after its is cooled, the hot fluid is filtered, so that a separate filter device upstream or downstream of the heat exchanger is unnecessary.

In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the housing is formed by an essentially block shaped packet comprising plates that define horizontal fluid conduits and coolant conduits, which plates are penetrated by the cylindrical chamber and by both a coolant conduit and a fluid outlet conduit. Alternatively, the housing is formed by a cylindrical body, in which the fluid conduits and the coolant conduits are embodied in the form of rings of axially extending conduits, and one or more outer rings of fluid conduits discharge at the face end of the housing toward the fluid inlet, and on the top of the cylindrical chamber, a deflection from the inner fluid outlet conduit to the outer fluid outlet conduit or outer fluid outlet conduits is provided.

In FIG. 1, the heat exchanger, produced for instance from special steel, for a fluid, in particular hydraulic oil, has a block shaped housing 1, which is formed of a packet of joined-together plates 2, 3 that between them define horizontal fluid conduits 4 and conduits 5 for a coolant, preferably water. The packet is penetrated both by a coolant distribution conduit 6 and by a cylindrical chamber 7 for distributing the fluid, as well as by a collection conduit (not shown) for cooled fluid. On the underside of the housing, there is an inlet 8 to the cylindrical chamber 7, and on the top of the housing a coolant inlet 9 and a coolant outlet 10 as well as an outlet 12 for cooled fluid are provided. The cylindrical chamber 7 is closed on the top of the housing by a screw cap 11 and is lined both on its circumference and on its upper face end with a filter body 13, through which the fluid flowing in under pressure flows in the radial direction into the fluid conduits 4.