S.sensing® VP Reduces Heat Exchanger Maintenance
Pozadí
A petrochemical plant in France producing PVC, VCM, caustic soda, and chlorine derivatives struggled with persistent scaling in its plate-type heat exchanger (HX) used for cooling water–brine service.
Despite using online cleaning and automatic valve control in the HX, heavy scaling required costly manual cleaning twice a year Due to the heavy scaling, the customer was performing manual cleaning on the equipment twice a year, which costs around 10k€ per application.
In addition, the fouling heavily affected the heat transfer, resulting in higher brine temperature and reduced process performance.
The root cause remained unidentified due to lack of operational data visibility for the heat exchanger.
Cíle
- Track exchanger performance through cooling water flowrate and cooling water temperatures
- Identify the cause of the heavy scaling
- Provide a solution to prevent frequent manual cleaning of the exchanger
