How to prevent over-pressurisation of heat exchangers

Heat exchangers heat up or cool down process fluids and gasses. They transfer heat between the process medium and a heating or cooling medium. They are widely applied in process plants, either to pre-heat or re-heat process fluids such as reboilers, or to pre-cool or re-condense them, such as condensers. They are commonly found around fractionating columns. Reboilers boil the liquid from the bottom of the column. Condensers condense the gases from the top of the column, before injecting them into the column again to increase the yield of the column. Heat exchangers are part of the core process,...

Maintenance and hydrostatic testing The continuous product flow contaminates the exchanger. Therefore, periodic maintenance is required. Testing of pressure vessels for transport and storage of gases is also very important, because such containers can explode if they fail under pressure. While heat exchangers must be maintained and tested in a live process, they are installed in parallel. This allows one to be maintained, while the other takes over the process. Changing over between heat exchangers requires strict adherence to procedures, to avoid hazardous mistakes. Dangers associated with heat...

What are the common solutions for these scenarios currently? To avoid dangers and incidents, such as loss of production time, or environmental damage, most companies have standard written operating procedures in place. In addition, most vessels are equipped with pressure and temperature transmitters to raise alarms. Written procedures and operating guidelines alone cannot ensure safe operations however, as the human factor is not excluded. Alarms on the other hand do inform about sudden pressure and temperature increases, but this information is presented too late to act and prevent damage. Avoid...

A custom made solution for your plant! Valve interlocks are permanently mounted on each inlet and outlet valve. They must be unlocked to operate the valve. Keys are trapped in their lock. Only one is free at a time. With uniquely coded keys you can only operate the right valve at the right time. Valve changeover can be complex operational processes. If a process that requires operators to complete more than one step once, or reverse a process, additional sequence control products help operators to follow non-linear sequences, and ensure that an operation happens safely. Using valve interlocks...

When defining the right sequence of valve operation, the following rules need to be adressed: • No product, steam or condensate flow during maintenance • First isolate from the quench oil • Then isolate from process water/dilution steam • Keep the safety valve in process as long as possible • Heat exchangers should switch to maintenance only one at a time. The inlet and outlet valves of the quench oil and process water/dilution steam, as well as the outlet valve of the safety valves, are equipped with interlocks. The valves are locked in open and closed position. All the quench oil inlet valves...

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