4 replies to this topic

Dear friends,

I am a process engineer at one of petrochemical plant in singapore.
Currently we have problems with our cooling water - heat exchanger line which is the check valve spring was broken and the metal pieces washed away to our heat exchanger.

Now at one of our heat exchanger, the metal pieces accumulates at the shell side. Several method we have tried but fail to detect and recover the metal pieces

PLEASE GO THROUGH the MS. EXCEL attachment for further detail of the problem and please give input or suggestion to solve this problem.

Your help and inputs are really appreciated.

Thank you in advance

Regards,
Michael Zhong

Attached Files

•  Problems_with_broken_spring_metal_pieces_at_HE_shell_side.xls   1.04MB   54 downloads

[Mehrdad]

hi
did you ever seen a problem after incident?if negative
never mind and let it work.

hi
did you ever seen a problem after incident?if negative
never mind and let it work.

The worst incident happen last year. As I mentioned before, the cooling water also for our chiller condenser. The metal pieces sharp edges make some condenser tubes leak. The refrigerant that mixed with cooling water makes the DP at compressor become low ( noisy sound at compressor) thus spoiled the chiller. That time we rented up to 5 mobile chillers but the production load still cannot achieve its max.

Based on that experience, we are afraid that the same case will happen to our tubes of E-201. If that happens, our polymer solution will mix with cooling water and spoiled all the mixture in reactor.

Any suggestion ?

[JoeWong]

Try to see if there is possibility to put a temporary strainer i.e. mesh

Sometime line pigging is used to remove obstacle in the line...

[Mehrdad]

HI
you can test the change of top by bottom of HE and revers the direction of wash water flow.it means you entering wash water to outlet flange and exiting from inlet flange . then monitoring inlet(current outlet) for pieces.
turbulent flow and chnge of flow rate is necessary.
maybe the broken spring coming out .