Heat exchanger monitor cuts costs, improves performance 27 March 2013

An integrated heat exchanger monitoring system, designed to detect accelerated fouling rates and to suggest when cleaning is required, has been unveiled by Emerson Process Management.

Pete Sharpe, Emerson's director of applications development, says that the system, which is part of the company's Essential Asset Monitoring suite, optimises plant energy usage, capacity, maintenance cost, carbon footprint and even safety.

Essentially, he explains, the pre-engineered system embeds process and exchanger best practices. It harnesses existing wired and new wireless instrument applications to enable automatic 24/7 monitoring.

As a result, technicians can schedule best times for exchanger cleaning to deal with fouling and sustain optimal heat transfer – and hence the energy and capacity improvements, which Sharpe says means up to 10% improvement.

"Typical world-class process facilities use hundreds of heat exchangers that foul over time, resulting in missed operating targets," explains Sharpe.

"Fouling typically occurs slowly but can be accelerated by inlet stream impurities or incompatible crude blends," he continues, making the point that energy costs then rise as downstream process heaters are forced to supply more energy to overcome heat transfer degradation.

"Increased demand on downstream fired heaters can also diminish throughput as operating temperature limits are reached, and can increase emissions and potential fines," adds Sharpe.

"Avoiding these issues requires an effective cleaning programme that enhances operations, and eliminates costs and time lost due to unnecessary schedule-driven cleaning or manual exchanger surveys."

Sharpe states that Emerson's new system is scaleable. Users simply choose the number and type of monitoring applications and instruments needed for a facility.

Temperature and pressure measurements are then trended and analysed, delivering alerts of accelerated fouling and notifying the optimal time to clean.

Heat transfer, exchanger heat-transfer coefficient, fouling factors and cost of degradation can be calculated. Operations personnel can get valuable insight into operations that can be adversely affected by exchanger fouling.

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
Emerson Process Management

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