Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
(OP)
Hi all, we have a heat exchanger, shell and tube double pass, no baffles, in which we can only shut it down every 4 months to hydroblast the tube sheet. The differential pressures rise to elevated pressures higher than we like to see after about a month. We want to use a chemical solvant but our problem is that it needs to be able to get into our foodgrade process stream. We have anthracite sand and garnate multimedia filters downstream. What is a good chemcial to use? And supplier in the southeast US?
We have brought in a supplier from chemtreat but he has been less than professional so we would rather not purchase from him.
PS- the heat exchanger regularly handles flows around 600 gpm of a substance at 65 brix and heats it from 140F(live steam injection upstream) to 185F
We have brought in a supplier from chemtreat but he has been less than professional so we would rather not purchase from him.
PS- the heat exchanger regularly handles flows around 600 gpm of a substance at 65 brix and heats it from 140F(live steam injection upstream) to 185F





RE: Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
Have you considered reverse flowing to flush out the deposits. If done on a regular basis, this will eliminate a costly chemical clean shut down.
Offshore Engineering&Design
RE: Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
RE: Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
As you require hydroblasting to remove the soil I would assume
that it is insoluble.
One thing we have used on soluble materials is an internal spray
system in the head. Depending on your soil this may be a
possibility. We use this approach in heat exchangers used in the production of acid anhydrides where we use the acids as part of the cleaning process. Durin outages for catalyst changing we inject a caustic solution through the internal nozzles to clean any residual anhydries.
On another system we had a problem with a direct steam injection
system where there was a concentration effect which polymerized the product to a sticky mess that coated everything downstream. We solved this problem by using a Steam Injection Mixer from Komax. This mixer essentially eliminated our problems.
There are a number of automatic mechanical heat exchanger cleaning system on the market. Some use sponge balls while the some others use brushes. I haven't used them but have see several favorable reports on their effectiveness.
http://www.komax.com/index.html
h
ion.pdf
RE: Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
If that doesn't seem effective ill look into the linked products.
RE: Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
that has a good possibility of resolving your problem.
You might also look at injecting the steam in two stages using injectors with intense mixing, You could use one to heat the stream prior to injection of the chemical. Again the object is to minimize the concentration effect, chemical and thermal.
You also might want to look at a Turbulator for the tubes in your heat exchanger. I know these work quite well with solid particles. Unknown is how they would work in your system.
http://www.alcotwin.com/turbulators.html
RE: Heat exchanger fouling, chemical additive?
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