Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Heat exchangers tubes retubing
(OP)
What is the rule of thumb practice for heat exchangers tubes retubing? One should replace tubes when they reach 1/3 of wall thickness? Or tubes should be replaced when they reach ½ of wall thickness?
Thanks
Luis Marques





RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
My question is related with eddy current and iris inspection. What are others practice? Replace tubes when they reach 1/3 of wall thickness? Or tubes should be replaced when they reach ½ of wall thickness?
Thanks
Luis
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Epoisses is right, depends on your need to keep plant running, specially when your company get a higher price for the produced commodities. In my country people wait up 3/4 wall looses to retubing.
Luiz
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Thank you for your sharing
Luis
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Thanks,
LV
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Heat exchangers tubes thickness is based in BWG. Most of our carbon steel tubes are 2.8mm nominal thick. In our case Heat exchangers lives are based on theoretical expected corrosion rates from RBI analysis. In some services when your corrosion is localized such as pitting or erosion is almost impossible to predict heat exchangers tubes replacement. When those few exchangers which don’t withstand a four years run, a root cause analysis will be required to determine or not a material upgrade.
Thanks for your sharing
Luis
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Thank you in advance.
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
Start a new post and you will stand a better chance of getting an answer.
RE: Heat exchangers tubes retubing
About 12 years ago, I spent several years working as a contractor performing IRIS inspections on heat exchangers. At the time, the majority of the refineries took action when they saw 50% wall loss. The action varied, based on time in service (corrosion rate), number of tubes that needed to be addressed, cost, failure consequence, and repair philosophy of the engineer. Typically, tubes were plugged or bundles retubed. When plugging, most planned to retube or reinspect at the next outage.
John