A syngas plant on the Houston Ship Channel faced a unique predicament. Their 840-tube exchanger was plugged solid with nickel sulfite. A failed attempt to sand-jet the tubes resulted in 805 of the tubes being blocked with both sand and nickel sulfate. That left only 35 open tubes in the entire bundle. The customer had two choices: scrap the exchanger or call Hydrokinetics.
We applied our patented process to the sand-packed, nickel-sulfite obstruction. After two passes through the exchanger, we successfully opened up 66 percent of the tubes—more than twice what was required for minimum operation. We not only doubled their plant exchanger flow, we saved them more than half a million dollars they would have paid for a new exchanger.
