Looking for examples of different PMs for cleaning of tublar heat exchangers (water cooled). We removed some for the first time in years and they were about 80% clogged. Also, monthly PMs that could be performed would help. Email anything you can share. I appreciate it. Thanks, in advance.

Water treatment control is the most important part of dealing with tubular exchangers.

I was working in exchangers manufacturer company and we had some regular customers which completely bought new exchangers after 3-4 years only because of ignoring water softening procedures - although it was clearly mentioned in maintenance manual.

Here is a previous post on hx:

http://maintenanceforums.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/119...311056711#8311056711

Water treatment must be good as mentioned above for water-cooled hx (either sweet cooling water or seawater). Additional things we do:
1) Monitor process parameters and thus the performance of the hx
2) Plan inspection & cleaning every turnaround

Water lancing is good for cleaning, and some places use it as an annual.

You can also do the old-school running rubber plugs through...very tedious with large HX.

Water treatment is especially important if they are left stagnant for peroids of time...it would probably be best to just drain them.

Citric acid treatments will get scale out, but will probably shorten tube life, but I imagine if done conservatively you could see good results.

Jim,

Have you been able to identify the composition and volume of the material fouling the exchangers? Different foulants need different 'cures', so merely following what others do may not help.

For example, periodic mechanical cleaning is useful, chemical cleaning is good in other cases. The frequency is a function of the fouling rate.

V.Narayan.