Inventive High Pressure Water Jetting
Many innovative alternatives - a new approach to cleaning heat transfer equipment
Inventive High Pressure Water Jetting
Many innovative alternatives - a new approach to cleaning heat transfer equipment
Time was a crucial factor for the Tube Tech team assigned to a contract with BP Chemicals. The team took just one day to complete the heat exchanger cleaning whereas the previous contractors took one week for the same job.
The PE2 vertical tubular heat exchanger at the site comprised 935 18-metre long tubes, all of which needed cleaning back to their original 12mm internal diameters. Their effectiveness had been reduced by built-up deposits within the tubes. Downtime is costly at such a productive plant so the brief for Tube Tech was to speed up the heat exchanger cleaning operation and keep disruption to a minimum.
Tube Tech rejected the traditional method of high-pressure water jetting combined with rigid and semi-rigid lances in favour of the company’s specially-developed DarTT and Turbine system. The DarTT is fired at high-speed which rotates through each individual tube and is collected at the other end along with the debris it has cleared.
The fast and efficient DarTT system meant Tube Tech’s work was completed in just 15% of the time taken by older, traditional methods. For the client this meant negligible downtime for the heat exchanger and an allied saving in costs. Logistically it also meant there was no unwieldy water-jetting plant required and from a safety point of view no high-pressure was required to aid cleaning.
Tube Tech Manager Scott Donson said:”The key issues for us were that the customer required the work done speedily and safely and we achieved that. We completed the heat exchanger cleaning to a high standard in a day against a week needed for high-pressure water jetting. We used a system developed by ourselves which has already proved itself in Tube Tech contracts around the world.”
The Project manager said: “I was pleased with the speed and effectiveness of the work done by Tube Tech. They helped us keep downtime to a minimum.”
Clients can be contacted via Tube Tech for references.
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