Fouling analysis and its mitigation in heat exchangers.

摘要

The fouling growth has been studied using thermal, second law and statistical analyses for two heat exchangers in oil industry. Moreover, the effectiveness of two new fouling mitigation technologies, namely helically baffled heat exchanger and self-cleaning heat exchanger, are evaluated. The results indicate that the helically baffled heat exchanger is very effective in reducing the shell side fouling and the self-cleaning heat exchanger is very effective in eliminating the tube side fouling. For the thermal analysis, comparison between the Bell Delaware and Flow Stream Analysis methods indicate that the Bell Delaware method gives a relatively more accurate fouling growth results. The evaluations based on second law of thermodynamics show that the irreversibility is increasing with the increase of fouling growth for the exchanger with the same thermal and hydraulic inlet conditions. This finding could be used by plants' engineers for easy fouling monitoring. The fouling growths from the statistical models were obtained and compared with the fouling growth obtained from the thermal analysis. The comparison indicates that there is no much difference in the fouling growth obtained from the two methods. Therefore, the statistical method represents an easy and accurate approach. The results of the study are presented in tabular and graphical forms and discussed in details.