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Fouling of surfaces during pasteurization of fluid food products when using plate heat exchangers is an issue of considerable economic significance to food industry. With this as the motivator, herein, a numerical model based on transient 2D momentum and energy equation is used to examine the model sensitivity with FLUENT. In this study, effect of the operating parameters such as inlet fluid velocity, plate gap size and plate length on hydrodynamics and thermodynamics of the flow were investigated. Length of the plate at which flow is fully developed, was found to vary between 0.70 to 38.3 % of the plate length depending on the gap size and inlet velocity. Linear correlations between entrance length versus Re were obtained for different plate gap sizes.