Sunday, March 30, 2008
If you are plant or maintenance engineer in Chemical & Process plant, you may check out IDCON. This site contains many useful plant maintenance and reliability tips. Most of the tips are presented in brief and short. No long article to be read. Why not check it out ? Following is a quick list and associated links of what are available so far in IDCON. Normally will publish tips in monthly basis...
For most updated listing and current tip...Check out in CURRENT TIPS...
Related Post
Labels: Maintenance
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Many Shell and Tube heat exchangers are provided in Chemical and Process plant for heat exchanging, heat recovery and integration for energy saving. There are many issues associate with Shell and tube heat exchanger such as corrosion, fouling & scaling, heat transfer efficiency drop, cleaning and maintenance, etc.One of the way to minimize and avoid above mentioned issues is applying protective coating on the tubes. The benefits are :
- CORROSION - Coating avoid corrosive contact with tube material and avoid corrosion. Extra corrosion allowance or corrosion resistance material is required. If severe corrosion occur, retubing may be required.
- FOULING & SCALING - Coating avoid sticky fluid contact with tube material and stay as fouling & scale.
- HEAT TRANSFER EFFICIENCY - Fouling & scaling will reduce heat transfer efficiency and more heat transfer area required. This will increases the heat exchanger capital investment.
- CLEANING & MAINTENANCE - Fouled heat exchanger shall be shutdown for cleaning and maintenance. In some event, chemical cleaning may be required. This increases heat exchanger operating and maintenance cost and also increases downtime and reduce plant availability.
- COST EFFECTIVENESS - In some configuration and operating condition, coating compare to corrosion resistance material, coating may turn out to be very cost effective.

Curran International (CI) is one of the heat exchanger tubing coating service provider. Edward Curran from CI has published an article in Chemical Processing.com.
On the other hand, there are disadvantages for coating. One of the major issue is the reliability of coating stay in tubing without dropping-off. Lost of coating layer may put the heat exchanger in unsafe operation without operator awareness and potentially lead to catastrophic consequence. This is an major issue alway debate till no conclusion and receive a lot of challenges.
What do you think about coating tubing ? Is any of your heat exchanger tubing coated ? Why not share you experience here ?
Related Topic
- Practical Design Tips for Heat Exchanger Design
- COLLECTION of Fouling Factor (FF) use in Heat Exchanger Design
- MultiChannel Heat Exchanger
- ECI – Operation & Maintenance Engineers - Don't miss FREE articles (>40) related to HX Fouling & Cleaning (Part 2)
- ECI – Operation & Maintenance Engineers - Don't miss FREE articles (>40) related to HX Fouling & Cleaning (Part 1)
Labels: Corrosion, Corrosion Resistance Material, Fouling, Heat Exchanger, Maintenance
Friday, July 20, 2007

If you plant / maintenance engineers, you probably interested to the following articles...
POLARIS, a Heat Exchanger manufacturer from Denmark. POLARIS supply Plate-and-Frame, Brazed, Safety-Pair Double-Wall Plate, Semi-Welded Plate and Free-Flow Plate Heat Exchangers.
FREE Operation and Maintenance Manual Available for download from POLARIS
Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger Operations Manual
Simpel operation guideline presented in the manual for Brazed Heat Exchanger. It covers how a brazed heat exchanger is operated, application, specification and advantages of brazed heat exchanger, installation guide, start-up & shutdown as well as cleaning procedures.
Plate-and-Frame Heat Exchanger Operation and Maintenance Manual
This manual briefly discusses a Plate Heat Exchanger Construction, function and characteristic, the gasket design, installation and start up procedures, maintenance & cleaning procedures.
Further reading...
Why Lower Fouling in Plate Heat Exchanger ?
Heat Exchanger Fouling Mechanism, Prevention and Treatment
PHE - Remove some plates, will pressure drop increase ?
ALFA LAVAL - Plate technology and Designing Plate & Frame Heat Exchanger
KOCH HTC - Special Heat exchanger provider...Twisted & Helical tube Heat exchanger
GEA - Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger
Heat Exchanger Fouling Mechanism, Prevention and Treatment
PHE - Remove some plates, will pressure drop increase ?
ALFA LAVAL - Plate technology and Designing Plate & Frame Heat Exchanger
KOCH HTC - Special Heat exchanger provider...Twisted & Helical tube Heat exchanger
GEA - Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger
Labels: Brazed Plate Heat Exchanger, Heat Exchanger, Maintenance, Operation, Plate Heat Exchanger
