Cleaning Schedule Operations in Heat Exchanger Networks

Heat exchanger networks have been known to be the essential parts in the chemical industries. Unfortunately, since the performance of heat exchanger can be decreasing in transferring the heat from hot stream into cold stream due to fouling, then cleaning the heat exchanger is needed to restore its initial performance periodically. A process of heating crude oil in a refinery plant was used as a case study. As many as eleven heat exchangers were used to heat crude oil before it was heated by a furnace to the temperature required to the crude unit distillation column. The purpose of this study is to determine the cleaning schedule of heat exchanger on the heat exchanger networks due to the decrease of the overall heat transfer coefficient by various percentage of the design value. A close study on the process of heat exchanger cleaning schedule in heat exchanger networks using the method of decreasing overall heat transfer coefficient as target. The result showed that the higher the fouling value the more often the heat exchanger is cleaned because the overall heat transfer coefficient decreases quickly.