Fan Installations & Maintenance
(Air-Cooled Heat Exchangers)
From upstream production in oil and gas to refineries, petro-chemical plants, gas treating plants, power plants, and compressor stations, air-cooled heat exchangers (or ACHEs) are used to cool or condense process heat. In most instances, ACHEs are critical to plant operation – they’re the lungs of the facility. Your ACHE takes hot process fluid and uses air to cool it, transferring the heat to the air and then discharging it. But when they fail, the entire plant shuts down or operates at a reduced capacity, severely impacting operations and profits. But even when they don’t fail, if they’re not regularly maintained, they’re not doing the job well – they’re not as efficient – and without realizing it, they’re impacting your bottom line.
ACHEs typically have the following components, all of which require maintenance and potential optimization:
- Bundles of heat transfer surface (finned or bare tubing connected by headers).
- A speed reducer (belt drive or right angle gear drive).
- A plenum between the heat transfer surface and air-moving device.
- A high support structure to allow air flow beneath the ACHE.
- Headers and walkways for maintenance.
- Louvers for process outlet temp control.
- Recirculation ducts and chambers.
- Variable pitch fan hubs or variable-frequency drive for temp control and efficient energy consumption.
- An axial-flow fan to move the air with an electric motor (or driver) and belt or gear power transmission to rotate it.
When ACHEs are neglected, dirt and debris build up, decreasing efficiency and increasing energy consumption and leading to failures. Dirty ACHEs have to work harder to do the same work and the stress on the machine can cause issues with belt drives, fans, fan boxes, seal discs, inlet bells, clearance, and vibration. As a result, industrial cleaners and The Fan Guy often partner with Vibe.FX to repair and optimize the ACHEs they clean.
Vibe.FX checks all of these components for optimal performance, including checking that fan blades are installed with the right pitch/angle clearance to prevent recirculation, sealing fan boxes to prevent air leaks, upgrading the bundles, balancing and/or restructuring fans, and vibration readings (finding resonance and adding skip frequencies to prevent running at damaging speeds).
