surface heat exchngers are typical simulated with simplified models obtained through segmentation of the heat exchanging fluid path in a number of consecutive lumps In order to aviod major drawbacks of this approach, which may be very misleading for control design purpose, we propose a method, based on the intergration of the PDE system by the method of characteristic lines, for the construction of numerical heat exchangers models. It can be proved that the time response of such new models is indeed rid of parasitic oscillation and suitable for the understanding of complex dynamic phenomena occurring and suitable for the understanding of complex dynamic phenomena occurring in long residence time heat exchangers, both with one- and two- phase flow. In this paper, particular attention is paid to the problem of generating finite dimensional dynamic system by application of the characteristic lines method and computing the frequency responce of such models. Actually, since the characteristic lines method is not naturally is not straightforward to define Finally, the accuracy of CL models is compared with classical models of comparable complexity, with special reference to real application cases, taken from the power generation field.