A V.C.F.E. (Texas Tower) at a large refinery in Asia suffered from a performance drop caused by tube bore blockages compounded by the heat exchangers inaccessibility and of course many years of operation. Previous cleaning attempts had been unsuccessful due to the limitations of traditional “jetting” technology which, as with many V.C.F.E. water jetting projects, takes too long and becomes the critical path.
This time it was essential that the cleaning contract was completed within a limited time frame with a better solution. Typical V.C.F.E. downtime costs can range from $100k to $500k per day so the cost of overrunning the shutdown was a great concern. Shell Global Solutions challenged Tube Tech International to develop an innovative cleaning technology to clean the tube with unknown deposits through limited access as well as presenting inspection results to the client.
Martin Byford, Operations Director: “We have cleaned a variety of V.C.F.E’s all over the world and can honestly say that this was the most fouled VCFE (Texas Tower) we have ever worked on. We are pleased that the client was satisfied with the inspection results they required”.
Clients can be contacted via Tube Tech for references.
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