Tracing the Causes of Heat Maintenance Issues

Steam tracing and other thermal maintenance applications are critical to production, but heated fluids can suffer from low temperatures, non-ideal viscosity, and resultant stagnated flow issues. The cause can often be attributed to design or routing of tracing methods, or that the steam traps used may not provide optimal application performance. This article reviews key factors for design or existing installation improvements. Focus is on tube/enhanced tube/channel tracing, or jacketed pipe heating for process fluid transport, such as in sulfur or resid lines, asphalt tanks, sulfur pits/submerged coils/seal legs/tanks, and paraxylene chutes or related manufacturing products.