Heat exchangers are essential for many industries, but their performance can be significantly impacted by fouling and corrosion. These can lead to reduced efficiency, increased maintenance costs, and potential safety hazards. Understanding the mechanisms, impacts, and prevention strategies for fouling and corrosion is crucial for ensuring the optimal operation of heat exchangers.
To get the best performance out of a vessel it’s important that it maintains necessary operating capacity. While there are several preventative maintenance procedures that can prolong the life of the vessel, eventually a decision on retubing or replacing the unit will need to be made.
Every tubed vessel requires the surface of the tubes to be clean and scale-free to function efficiently and to ensure accurate testing when searching for tube leaks.
While tube leaks can occur for numerous reasons, one of the most common causes is the formation of holes. Holes can form within a tube as a result of deposit build-up, corrosion, improper cleaning heads being used, and more.
