Abstract:
Energy recovery and production in oil refinery pre-heat trains
are greatly affected by fouling, the progressive build-up of unwanted
material on the heat exchanger surfaces. Even when good
design practices, operation or mitigation measures are in place,
fouling cannot be completely eliminated in most situations. As
a result, heat exchangers have to be periodically taken out of operation
for cleaning. Traditional mechanical cleaning methods
(e.g. hydro-blast) usually remove the whole deposit while chemical
cleaning methods represent a less expensive option whose
effectiveness depends on a number of factors (e.g. choice of
chemicals, deposits composition and ageing, etc.). In this paper a
detailed dynamic distributed model of shell and tube exchangers
undergoing fouling has been used to simulate different cleaning
schedules involving mechanical and chemical operations and assess
their economic impact.
Description:
Papers presented to the 12th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Costa de Sol, Spain on 11-13 July 2016.
