Safety heat exchangers are used wherever the highest requirements for product purity in process engineering (such as food/chemical/pharmaceutical industry) are required, where there is an environmental risk of contaminating cooling or process water, or because mixing of the media can damage the machine or system.

Unlike a standard shell & tube heat exchanger with a single wall design, the tubes in double tube safety models have two walls, consisting of an inner and outer tube. They also have two tube sheets at each end. If a tube wall is damaged, the product flows through leakage channels arranged between the double tubes into a leakage collection space and triggers an alarm in the leak detection device.