Heat Exchanger Tube Cleaning

If your industry or line of work requires you to use heat exchangers, then you really do need to make sure that cleaning them is a top priority on your to-do list. This procedure can oftentimes be more than a little tedious, not to mention take up plenty of key resources such as time and money. But given that they are so important, since in many cases the machinery they safeguard can oftentimes be very sensitive to heat and/or temperature fluctuations, you would be asking for trouble if you were to not treat your heat exchangers well.

Heat exchanger tube cleaning can oftentimes be very tedious because the very design of many exchanger tubes can make them hard to clean. The design of these tubes can be convoluted or quite curved or bent into a variety of shapes. This can make the usual methods of tube cleaning, especially using water jets, less useful. All the curves, for instance, can slow the water down, reducing its usefulness as regards removing contaminants, especially if these contaminants are encrusted or otherwise stuck to the walls or sides of the tubes. In addition, as water slows down as it curves, many contaminants can easily be deposited in certain areas. Therefore, traditional methods of tube cleaning may not be too effective, if at all, when applied to heat exchanger tubes.

Fortunately for those concerned, there are newer sorts of equipment and/or techniques that have been developed to aid in heat exchanger tube cleaning and which can work much better than water. One can make use of chemical cleaners, such as acids or detergents for instance, which can act to weaken even encrusted debris or dissolve it altogether. One can also make use of physical cleaners, like scraping tools or abrasive balls for example, which are far harder than water jets and which can really make sure that any contaminants are removed from the tubes. Or one could employ a combination of physical and chemical cleaners - or can even combine either one or both with water jets in order to make sure that one's heat exchanger tubes really are as clean as they can be.

However, a word of caution regarding selecting these newer sorts of techniques and equipment for heat exchanger tube cleaning: one must make sure that one takes into consideration the fact that not all equipment and techniques are suitable for all kinds of heat exchanger tubes. For example, the metal in certain tubes may react to certain chemical cleaners, and older ones might not be able to withstand certain techniques. Make sure you find out about your heat exchanger system's limitations before you make your choice of cleaning equipment and techniques.

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