Condition-Based Cleaning Models for Industrial Heat Exchangers

Periodic cleaning of industrial equipment is often necessary to maintain plant performance over long operating periods. Although cleaning decisions (i.e. which heat exchanger to clean, when to clean it and – crucially – how to clean it) should be based on economic drivers (including trade-offs between operating costs, throughput of the installation and quality of the cleaning preformed), they are very often made based on operators’ experience and simplistic – often misleading – performance indicators (e.g. fouling resistance, pressure drops). Moreover, operators may not be aware of which cleaning technologies are available to them and which is the optimal option to use .

In this paper, a framework integrating condition-based cleaning models that capture kinetics and efficiency of a cleaning action as a function of the characteristics of fouling deposits (e.g. composition, layering, degree of coking) is presented. The approach is used to provide actionable information on the best method to be used, duration of the cleaning and expected economic benefits, depending on actual equipment conditions. Results are presented for individual heat exchangers and entire networks.