With 14 heat exchangers in the process train of a recovery unity, a Houston petrochemical plant needed to clean more than 7,000 tubes, solidly plugged or lined with polymers for years.
Traditional hydroblasting was time consuming and expensive—cleaning all 14 bundles would cost $30,000. And production time lasted only six to eight weeks before the next shutdown. The plant manager contacted Hydrokinetics.
Using patented Hydrokinetics technology, we cleaned all of the plugged tubes in a fraction of the time required for hydroblasting. The process even removed the entire polymer coating inside. Three months later, the plant manager called to let us know the train had continued to run with little drop in efficiency.
