Tube Cleaning Equipment – What Does the Future Hold?
If you’ve seen the Tru TV show Black Gold, then you know that down time on an oil rig is extremely costly. Every time something goes wrong, and time is lost, you will hear the narrator state that the cost of the lost time is in the thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars. The equipment itself is very costly as well. I heard the voice over state that the drill bit alone costs in the range of $64,000 dollars. This was mentioned as the one team needed to change the drill bit.
The oil refinery business is the epitome of big business. There are many types of expensive and specialized equipment that is used throughout all the stages, and the price tag becomes even bigger with off shore rigging. Although heat exchangers are a part of every device that transfers heat from one fluid to another, the shell and tube heat exchangers that are used in industry are especially important to maintain.
When a rig or plant needs to go down for maintenance, as I mentioned before, it costs thousands of dollars per hour. As a result, it remains a common industry practice to try and just use the heat exchanger as long as possible, even when the efficiency has dropped below 40%. Plants just do not want to shut down until heat exchanger tube cleaning becomes an absolute necessity.
Another standard practice is to shut down for a period of 21 days when they finally do go offline for maintenance and tube cleaning. This is really the standard more because it’s the way it’s always been done than because it is actually the best way to do things. Now, take into account the cost of down time, and ask yourself just what kind of cost you think is incurred by a 21 day shutdown. Now, just keep that thought in the back of your mind.
The old standby method of tube cleaning is pressure jetting water and essentially knocking loose all the scaling that has caused the fouling. This is an inefficient method. Although it does sort of work, it is difficult to get the u-bends satisfactorily and efficiently defouled.
Full replacement of a shell and tube heat exchanger is costly. Cutting off u-bends and rewelding them is inefficient, and sometimes either tricky or dangerous, depending on the logistics of the placement. Pressure jetting is outdated. So what can be done?
Recent developments in tube cleaning equipment technology can now allow shell and tube heat exchanger cleaning to be completed in just 3 hours. New methods include foam cleaning, laser cleaning, and newer “smart” technologies that can tell the difference between buildup that needs to be removed, and the surface of the tube itself. The “smart” metals back off when they get through the fouling, leaving the shell and tube heat exchanger intact.
By using newer technologies, and rethinking the old ways, plants can have more efficient output of their heat exchangers, less downtime, and more efficient tube cleaning. Especially with fuel costs rising as they are, it is time for the industry to take a look at more efficient tube cleaning equipment that will save money on the production end. Hopefully this savings will then pass on to the consumer.