High-pressure cleaning of heat exchangers

Thread Content

Typically, when a large heat exchanger becomes clogged, the most common method is to clean it using a high-pressure water gun. However, this approach requires high technical skills from the operators, involves heavy physical labor, generates a large amount of wastewater, and results in relatively high cleaning costs. Recently, in order to further reduce costs associated with cleaning heat exchangers, the DMTO plant adopted offline chemical cleaning for the wash water reboiler of the propylene distillation column, based on thorough evaluation and taking into account local conditions. The results were satisfactory; this approach not only overcame the rule that high pressure is always required for heat exchanger cleaning but also **reduced the cleaning time and associated costs. It is understood that on June 12, sampling and laboratory analysis showed that after two days of chemical cleaning, the results were comparable to those achieved through high-pressure water jet cleaning. As of the time of writing, the reboiler has been put into operation and is performing well in terms of heat exchange; the operating load of the DMTO unit has reached 110%.