The reboiler on our 30-year-old distillation column (Figure 1) finally has failed us; the tubes have been replaced four times. However, we would like to avoid an emergency shutdown and wait until a scheduled outage in a few months. Recently, we added a duplicate second column; we installed that column to allow boil-outs because changes in feedstock caused fouling every quarter year in the old column. Product demand has both columns running as hard as possible. Any suggestions for how we can maintain production? If need be, our other plants may be able to pick up the slack. Should we abandon the old column and rebuild it? I've also discovered a second problem: nobody can find the R-stamp report for the first three tubesheet repairs. I ran into a similar problem when I checked some other heat exchangers in these columns: we have the last R-stamp report but we're missing others. What can be done? Do we need to worry?
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