Decreasing the Fouling of Heat Exchanger Plates Using Air Bubbles

Abstract

The heat transfer performance of heat exchanger plate decreases as time goes by. The main reason for this phenomenon is the fouling of the heat exchanger plates. To remove the fouling, we have usually cleaned the plate of heat exchanger using chemicals or polishing brush or cloth with hand after stopping the equipment and disassembling the heat exchanger. However, to clean the plate using these methods, the heat exchanger equipment needs to be stopped and disjointed. In addition, it must be re-jointed after cleaning. Especially, the concern of environmental pollution happens in case of using chemicals. Therefore, we need to develop an automatic fouling removal equipment which can continuously keep high heat transfer efficiency and solve the problem of environmental pollution. So, in this paper, we developed and tested the equipment which can clean the fouling on heat exchanger plates automatically per constant period and interval using air bubbles. The total heat transfer coefficient decreased with a slower tendency when using air bubbles compared to the existing methods. There was 10% higher heat transfer effect air bubbles every 10 minutes for 2 hours to remove the fouling ingredients on the heat transfer surface area concerned to the case without air bubbles after 192 hours.