Cleaning Marine Diesel Heat Exchanger

This video shows a hands on example of how to clean a marine diesel heat exchanger on a westerbeke. It's quite simple and easy to follow. Check it out.

Cleaning Heat Exchangers, Vents & Ducts with Dry Ice Blasting

Cleaning the heat exchanger, vents and ducts on the USN Pecos can actually be done using ice blasting technology as well. So, if you find it difficult to clean heat exchanger using water, you now know how to do it fast and efficient.

Heat Exchanger Shellside Cleaning System (NBL Corp.)

This is a video that shows a huge machine that is used to clean a shell and tube heat exchanger. A trailer mounted bundle cleaner with a single hydraulically operated crane to easily position the cleaning head over the bundles. The arm also permits easy loading and unloading of the included hydraulically actuated rollers, which turn the bundles during the cleaning process. NLB Model SSC9200A {Pressure:10,000 PSI (690 bar)}, NLB Model SSC8900A {Pressure:20,000 psi (1380 bar)}.

Do You Really Need Fireplace Heat Exchanger Cleaning Equipment?

Before deciding whether heat exchanger cleaning equipment is something you need, it's best to take a step back and make sure you know exactly what a fireplace heat exchanger is. Simply put, it's a device used to make sure no cool air from outside of your home is brought inside when the fireplace returns air it's using from inside your home. So what happens when your heat exchanger breaks or gets built up with gunk and dirt? The fireplace becomes quite ineffective and starts actually cooling your house rather than heating it, the opposite of your intent.

This is where the cleaning equipment comes in to play! The tools are used to clean the exchanger making it possible for your fireplace to function properly at all times, keeping your house as warm as you'd like it to be. Unfortunately, finding the right cleaning gear can be kind of intimidating when it comes time to determine whether it's what you need, or whether there's another problem with the fireplace. Before investing in heat exchanger cleaning equipment make sure you're experiencing the right signs for the need, instead of signs of some other kind of trouble.

These signs include suddenly feeling much colder in the room than usual, especially when the difference seems to have taken place literally overnight. Also make sure that everything else seems to be working right on the unit. Finally, you may want to consult a professional so they can tell you whether you need such cleaning equipment or not. There's a chance the professional can simply take care of the problem for you right then and there, or even rent you the proper heat exchanger cleaning equipment.

If the tools are something you end up having to purchase, don't do so without comparison shopping first. Make sure you find the best deal possible for the highest quality. You'll also want to verify what the return policies are (in case the equipment is something you don't really end up needing or it doesn't work) and whether or not parts on the equipment can be easily replaced.

Sanno Zaye covers more about heat exchanger cleaning equipment at Heat Exchanger Equipment.

Refinery Heat Exchanger Tubes Cleaning

This video presents how a typical high pressure tubes cleaning process seems like. Check it out.

Better Heat Exchanger Cleaning Through Technology

Maintenance of a platform's Waste Heat Recovery Unit (WHRU) and similar shell and tube heat exchangers can be an extremely dangerous process. It needs to be disconnected, taken off line, and moved to shore for repair. Shell and tube heat exchangers are made of coiled tubes and can become fouled with carbon deposits. The traditional methods for clearing the blockage include bypassing the fouled unit, cutting off bends and cleaning the tubes, then re-welding the U-bends, and complete unit replacement.

The old methods are becoming more outmoded due to advancements in technology. It is inefficient to bypass the unit. Just as it would be less efficient to run your car with 2 cylinders not firing. This inefficiency, of course, also increases operational costs. It is time consuming and costly to cut the U-bends and re-weld them. Sometimes it can be difficult or impossible to get access to reattach them.

Some of these new methods include the ability to clean areas with limited access, and clear deposits from U-bends without ever removing them. This can sometimes be done without even taking the unit offline, and usually takes less time and results in a higher degree of defouling. In fact, many units can be restored to near-factory efficiency. For big refineries, petro-chemical plants, or power plants, this can amount to six figure savings.

The U-bends themselves also retain many deposits, and continue to be a bottleneck to the system. Full replacement carries the cost of completely replacing equipment that, other than the heat exchanger tube fouling, is still in working order. This method also requires the unit be taken offline for the full duration of replacement. obviously this carries a heavy expense and serious loss of production.

Traditional heat exchanger cleaning methods and heat exchanger cleaning equipment have changed very little over the last few decades. Pressure jetting is still the primary means used by many companies, but it is slow, inefficient, and ultimately very costly. Additionally, many companies are skeptical of newer methods, falling back on the "that's the way it's always been done," chain of logic. They are also weary of trying new techniques that are not as "proven" to be effective. Finally, many have long term tube cleaning contracts that do not allow for a change in heat exchanger cleaning technique, unless the contractor were to adopt the new methods.

Newer heat exchanger cleaning equipment and techniques are more technologically advanced, and by extension, require a higher skilled laborer than old style pressure jetting. These new developments include the ability to clean tight radius bends, clean units while keeping them in place, and even while keeping them online. It has also resulted in faster, more efficient cleaning. Many tube bundles can now be cleaned more effectively than with pressure jetting, and jobs that used to take days may now take only a few hours. Difficult to access units are now accessible with these new technologies.

Some of the technology that has been developed includes special nozzles that can be used on tight bends, laser cleaning, and new "smart" metals that respond to changes in density and pressure to prevent damage to the tubes. With these methods, jobs can be finished with less downtime, because cleaning and descaling can be done more quickly. Equipment is also less likely to be damaged in the process. Many of these new processes are safer, create less waste, use no chemicals, and have a significantly reduced environmental impact.

Alex Parry writes about heat exchanger safety at his heat exchanger cleaning equipment site

Cleaning Shell and Tube Crude Oil Heat Exchangers

Tube Tech International proved that previous industry standards for cleaning such equipment with U bends were inadequate and, for the first time on this unit, Tube Tech gave not only the straight legs, but also the U sections a complete internal clean.

Heat Exchanger Tubes Cleaning Basics

Clean your heat exchanger tube is a job everyone can do if they know how to do it. If you are a handy type of person, then you should have no problems with this task.
There are several methods for cleaning the heat exchanger tubes. Here are some of them; one of them is the use of chemicals for cleaning. Another is the use of water with high pressure in the system. The final method is to use mechanical cleaning with brushes of balls scrapers and abrasives. These are the best ways to clean the tubes.

Regular cleaning of the heat exchanger tubes should be the life of the whole unit. It helps to work at the heat exchanger maximum efficiency.

Many people use heat exchangers for heating swimming pools in nowadays. With the ability to clean by its own, heat exchanger tubes would be a good way to save money and your operating system.

It would be helpful to the clean the tubes of the heat exchanger every few months. At least check to see if they need to be cleaned. If they do not need to be cleaned, make sure that they are thoroughly cleaned twice a year.

To properly clean the heat exchanger tubes, they must be removed from the system. Remove all in bulk, near the ends of the pipes and inside of them. Use a brush and press down to the tubes as cleaning begins. The brush should be good strong nylon bristles. This help to resolve and remove all the material such as scale and debris in the tubes.

During the brushing process you will find material adhered to the wall of the heat exchanger tube. A plastic of metal scraper, will help eliminate, those unwanted thing stuck to the tube wall. Be careful not to damage the tube. Don’t use anything that is harder than the tube.

Try not to scratch the wall of the heat exchanger tubes in which the tube could not work. This will scratch the tube internally. This means, a plastic scraper is a good tool to be used.

As a final step, of cleaning the heat exchanger tubes, you can use jets to force out all loosen particles, which have been missed with the previous methods. If you have deposits of calcium in the tubes then you need chemicals to eliminate them.
Now you have the basics for cleaning your exchanger tubes. Collect as much information as possible before you do this work.

Filtration Systems Can Reduce Maintenance and Downtime.

To strike an interesting analogy, your cooling tower and heat exchanger is what the lungs and heart are to the human body; when either aren't working properly, it effects other parts of the body and your health suffers. Similarly, when your cooling tower and heat exchanger isn't clean, the heat exchange process doesn't work efficiently and the health of your production and process cooling system suffers.

Process cooling systems that rely on cooling towers to dissipate heat from process cooling water accomplish this by drawing massive volumes of air into the cooling tower as the water travels through the fill material on its way back to the basin. Through the natural evaporative process, heat is dissipated from the water before it reaches the water basin from which it is re-circulated through the chiller then through the heat exchanger and back again (kind of like when you sweat while working and letting the air evaporate the perspiration to cool you down). It is important to realize that cooling towers are gigantic air scrubbers that capture all airborne debris that happen to be floating nearby, and if your system doesn't have effective filtration, the debris can clog the fill and get circulated and trapped in the heat exchanger where it can build-up, restrict water flow and cause your process equipment to malfunction due to overheating.

An example of this is illustrated by a major automotive assembly facility that had faced periodic downtime due to their robotic welding systems not holding tolerances and causing quality problems. After the robotic technicians spent several days trying to initially solve the problem, one of the maintenance workers opened the heat exchanger and discovered that it was impacted with cottonwood seed, insects and other debris - flow had been reduced and the robotic equipment was running hot. Now you might be asking yourself, whey didn't they have some sort of filtration equipment? The answer is simple; at the time the facility was built, the ambient conditions in that area didn't require a filtration system. However, as the years went by and the area became more developed and cottonwood tree populations grew, the need eventually surfaced.

The interesting thing to note about this situation is that even though cleaning the heat exchanger got the robotic welding system back on-line and running at peak performance, it didn't solve the problem. In fact, cleaning heat exchangers is like taking a cold capsule to relieve the symptoms of a cold. Unless you treat the root cause of the problem, the cooling system will suffer time and again. The root cause in this case and in most heat exchanger fouling situations is the cooling tower - stop the debris from getting into the cooling tower and it will protect the entire process cooling system including fill, cooling water, chiller and heat exchanger. With the proper filtration technology, your process cooling system will stay clean and running efficiently all season long.

Selecting The Right Filtration System

It is important to realize that optimizing the ecology and operational efficiency of your evaporative cooling system is best accomplished by combining a chemical treatment regimen with some type of filtration. The reason is that chemical treatment specifically targets suspended solids and particulates of 40 microns and below, while filtration systems are designed to stop larger debris, especially the kind that causes system clogging and fouling.

For cooling tower filtration, there are two general technologies: Water Based Systems for which there are a few different variations and Air Intake Filtration Systems. With water-based systems, the choices include basic water strainers that remove debris by simply passing water through a mesh strainer; sand filtration systems that remove debris by passing the water through sand and centrifugal separators that spin the water and remove the debris through centrifugal action. In contrast, Air Intake Filter Systems remove the debris by filtering the air as it is being drawn into the cooling tower, keeping the debris out of the system in the first place. When considering your filtration options, the following questions should be asked.

• What is the cost associated with downtime due to heat exchanger or cooling tower fouling or clogging? (Knowing this will help you justify your filtration system cost)
• What type of debris is most problematic (can you see it or is it microscopic)?
• Specifically what part of the system does the filter protect?
• Which system provides the greatest filtration surface area (this can directly impact frequency of cleaning - the smaller the filter the more frequently it needs cleaning)
• Can the system be installed without shutting down the cooling tower? (If the cooling tower must be shut down for installation, you need to factor lost productivity into the cost of your filtration system if it's not being installed during shutdown periods.)
• What is the cost associated with both the filter and installation?
• How easy is the system to install and maintain?

Answering the above questions will help you to fully understand your options and to make the best choice for your operation.

In the case of the automotive manufacturer, the solution they selected was the Air Intake Filter system. The reason was that they needed a system that would protect their entire process cooling system including fill material, cooling water, chiller and heat exchanger. When they evaluated water-based systems, they discovered that the options provided varying degrees of protection for the chiller and heat exchanger but didn't protect the cooling tower where the root of their problem was. If they had selected a water-based system, their cooling tower would have still drawn airborne debris into both the fill and water where the water filter would have captured the debris before it circulated throughout the system. From a maintenance standpoint, that would have solved the heat exchanger problem but it would have done little to reduce maintenance on the cooling tower. Further, when they compared the cost of water based filtration versus air intake filtration technologies, Air Intake Filtration was found to be the more cost effective approach for their operation.

If you are not currently using a filtration system as part of your process cooling system, then any filtration technology will give you more protection than you have now, however, selecting a solution best suited to your operation requires that you know what kind of debris is the problem and where it is getting into the system. As a rule of thumb, " don't select a small debris solution to solve a large debris problem". Conversely, "don't select a large debris solution to solve a small debris problem". There is clearly a place for both water based filtration and air intake filtration - be sure you're selecting the right filtration for your specific need.

If you are looking to protect only your chiller and heat exchanger from airborne debris, then one of the water-based filtration technologies in combination with a good water treatment program can help you manage the debris that gets into the cooling water. If on the other hand, you're looking for full process cooling system protection, then you should look at Air Intake Filtration - It will stop the debris from getting into your system in the first place.

Air Solution Company developed and patented the first Air Intake Filter specifically engineered to mount to the outside of cooling towers and other HVAC equipment for purposes of stopping the debris before it entered into the system. Since that time, Air Solution Company has been manufacturing and has introduced a variety of other innovative filter systems including its new Fine Mesh Filter which is engineered for use on small and medium size refrigeration coils and machine fan intake housing units. Air Solution Company Randy Simmons is with Air Solution Company, author of articles can be reached at http://www.airsolutioncompany.com

Plate Heat Exchanger Cleaning In Place (CIP)

Frequency of CIP is once a year per plate heat exchanger. However, when any of the plate heat exchanger performance has deteriorated, the CIP need to be carried out immediately.

Drain out the remnant oil from the plate heat exchanger that is scheduled for cleaning.

Dismantle the flanges that are connected to the plate heat exchanger for fixing flexible hose of CIP line.

Fill in fresh water into the CIP tank until the marked level and heat the water to 70 to 90°C.

Circulate the hot water from CIP tank to plate heat exchanger and back to CIP tank for 4 to 6 hours.

After 4 to 6 hours drain out the water from the Plate Heat Exchanger, CIP line and CIP tank.

Prepare 8 % of caustic solution by pouring 6 bags X 25 kgs of caustic soda pearls and fill water into CIP tank.

Note: Wear personal protective equipment (PPE) like goggles, rubber glove and dust mask when preparing lye solution.

Heat the caustic solution to 70 to 80°C.

Circulate the caustic solution from CIP tank to plate heat exchanger and back to CIP tank for 4 to 5 days.

Record the flow rate of the initial caustic flow and take a sample of the circulated water (for reference).

After 1 day of caustic circulation, stop the CIP pump for 10-15 minutes. Then run it again. Repeat this step in a space of every six hours. This is to aggressively loosen any stubborn scale sticking on the plate surface.

After 2 or 3 days of caustic circulation, stop the CIP pump and reverse the flow. The flexible hose connection needs to be changed.

Repeat the steps.

After circulating for 4 to 5 days take the flow rate reading and water sample of the circulated caustic solution.

Drain out the used caustic solution from the plate heat exchanger, CIP line and CIP tank and clean the CIP tank.

Drained Lye solution will be pumped to Effluent Plant for further treatment.

Fill in water into the CIP tank and heat the water to 70 to 80°C.

Circulate the hot water from CIP tank to Plate Heat Exchanger and back to CIP tank for 4 to 6 hours.

Repeat this exercise for 3 times.

After 3 times of washing with hot water check the PH of hot water.

If the PH is 7 which is neutral, drain out the water from the plate heat exchanger, CIP line and CIP tank.

Record down the CIP of plate heat exchanger in weekly cleaning checklist.

Plate Heat Exchanger Cleaning

Cleaning Plate Heat Exchanger - Oil/Oil with high temperature

This method can be used for plate heat exchanger cleaning using the "cleaning in place" (CIP) method. This is the cheapest way to clean a plate heat exchanger and it is better then dismantling, washing and re-gasketing the plates. We need to use caustic solution at a temperature between 60-70oC.

Cleaning Plate Heat Exchanger - Oil/Water with high temperature

This method can be used for plate heat exchanger cleaning using the "cleaning in place" (CIP) method. This is the cheapest way to clean a plate heat exchanger and it is better then dismantling, washing and re-gasketing the plates. We need to use phosphoric or sulfuric acid at a temperature between 60-70oC.