Mitigation of Process Heat Exchanger Fouling: an Integral Approach

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There are many industrial heat exchanger applications where chemical additives cannot be used to mitigate severe fouling problems, due to product purity requirements, operating conditions or economic considerations.A fundamental approach to reduce the impact of heat exchanger fouling on such process plant operation is demonstrated, using the Kraft pulping process and the Bayer bauxite refinery process as examples. Both processes suffer from rapid deposit formation, which renders the heat exchanger train the bottleneck of plant operation. A combination of fundamental studies, laboratory and plant measurements was used together with models of the actual heat transfer process, to predict optimum operating conditions and schedules.

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    They also found that the fluidised bed concept was very promising to remove scale by the action of abrasion, but equipment cost was very high. Müller-Steinhagen [19] investigated mitigation of heat exchanger fouling in the Kraft pulping process and the Bayer bauxite refinery process using an integral approach involving modelling, laboratory and plant measurements. In the Bayer process, use of liquid/solid fluidised bed operation under nucleate boiling significantly reduced fouling.

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    To reduce milk fouling deposition on processing surfaces, various techniques such as modification of processing parameters, addition of fouling inhibiting chemicals and modification of processing equipment design have been studied (Belmar-Beiny et al., 1993; Bradley and Fryer, 1992; Chen et al., 2004; Delplace et al., 1994, 1997; Elofsson et al., 1997; Jeurnink et al., 1996; Visser and Jeurnink, 1997). Since alteration in the processing parameters and addition of fouling inhibiting chemicals may affect product quality, nutritional and functional properties and legal requirements (Müller-Steinhagen, 1998), they cannot be modified easily. Hence, alteration in one or more of surface properties of the processing surface, such as surface roughness, free surface energy, surface chemistry and/or topography is one possible technique to mitigate milk fouling with potentially less impact on process conditions or product quality.

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