In the present study, the recent research of three kinds of surface heat exchangers, i.e., shell-and-tube heat exchangers with helical baffles, air-cooled heat exchangers used in large air-cooled systems, and primary surface heat exchangers are reviewed. They are used in the energy conversion and utilization for liquid to liquid, gas to gas and liquid to gas heat exchange, respectively. It can be concluded that the helical baffled shell-and-tube heat exchangers (STHXs) should be used to replace the conventional segmental baffled STHXs in industries, despite there are a lot of research work have to be done, especially on the novel combined helical baffles. The primary surface gas to gas heat exchangers are developing towards to the snore complex 3D CC primary surfaces, such as the double-wave CC primary surface, offset-bubble primary surface and 3D anti-phase secondary corrugation. The whole performance for the air-cooled heat exchangers in the air cooling system and the multi-objectives optimization for air-cooled heat exchangers should be paid more attention, considering the heat transfer, pumper power, space usage and other economic influence factors. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.