Heat exchangers require consistent and thorough maintenance to ensure they function properly and don’t succumb to fouling. Choosing to utilize heat exchanger preventive maintenance strategies can not only prolong your heat exchanger’s service life, but also minimize costs and repairs resulting from relying purely on reactive maintenance.
It’s important to understand how fouling occurs to understand the key strategies to preventing it. Over time, heat exchangers build up scale made up of various pieces of sediment or minerals that naturally accumulate on an exchanger’s surfaces. This process is often referred to as fouling, and it can have a significant impact on the functionality of the exchanger itself. If this buildup is not efficiently removed, the equipment often has to be overworked to transfer or exchange heat, resulting in increased wear and tear, high operational costs, and excess energy consumption. Utilizing preventative maintenance helps to reduce the likelihood of this natural buildup disrupting heat exchangers’ functionality.
Creating a comprehensive cleaning schedule for your heat exchanger is a key way to prevent scale buildup overtime. How frequently you need to clean your exchanger is reliant on the piece of equipment itself, how often it has been cleaned in the past, and how quickly you notice scale building up. It can be helpful to look at historical data to determine patterns of use or buildup that will help determine how frequently the heat exchanger should be cleaned.
Another key strategy for performing preventative maintenance on your heat exchanger is to utilize predictive tools and processes like fluid analysis and monitoring to gauge in advance when fouling may be occurring. Often, fouling can be identified by monitoring temperature and pressure or testing the pH of the fluids flowing within your heat exchanger and monitoring systems can help to identify when efficiency or performance is lower than normal, thus indicating a cleaning is needed.
Utilizing preventative strategies can be massively beneficial in the long run, particularly when it comes to cost-saving techniques. Infrequent cleanings and reactive repairs often cause increased downtime and hefty price tags that could be averted by planning maintenance in advance and keeping an eye on the ongoing efficiency of your equipment. Partnering with a trusted heat exchanger cleaning specialist, like Wheelhouse Industries, allows you to create a robust heat exchanger preventive maintenance schedule that fits the unique needs of you and your heat exchanger, thus reducing costs and downtime.