Heat-exchanger fouling monitoring across a chemicals group's sites
A business case to move heat-exchanger maintenance from planned to condition-based across 50 sites, built on a pilot where differential pressure proved the tell-tale sign of fouling.
Challenge
A global chemicals group with 50 sites, the largest with more than 30 heat exchangers, maintained them on a planned schedule at 20–100 thousand dollars per exchanger per year, with unplanned outages costing 20% more than planned ones and little knowledge shared between sites.
Solution
After earlier pilots with the group on compressor condition monitoring and catalyst deactivation, Arundo and the group built the business case for condition-based monitoring of heat exchangers, using a proven approach in which differential pressure over the hot side of the exchanger flags fouling in key operating modes, raises an event to the operator, and shows the efficiency recovered after cleaning.
Impact
A roll-out plan with a site template, and a business case built with the group on more than 10% lower maintenance cost, earlier warning for maintenance planning and fewer unplanned outages.