Study on oil fouling in a double pipe heat exchanger with mitigation by a surfactant

Abstract

Fouling of oils on heat exchanger surfaces and pipelines is a common problem in a variety of industrial applications. This is because the oil deposits on the heat transfer surface causes an increase in pressure drop and a decrease in heat exchanger efficiency. In the current work, oil fouling in double pipe heat exchanger was investigated and mitigated using a surface‐active agent for the flow of a dispersion fluid containing different dispersed oil fractions in water. The effect of the dispersed oil fraction (5%vol and 10%vol) and temperature (35°C‐55°C) on the oil fouling rate was studied and discussed under turbulent flow conditions for both hot and cold fluids. Different amounts of alkylbenzene sulfonate as a surfactant were added to reduce the fouling rate under turbulent flow. It was found that the fouling thermal resistance (Rf) increases when the fluid temperature decreases. The higher the dispersed oil fraction, the higher the Rf for all temperatures due to higher oil deposition. Addition of 0.2%vol to 0.5%vol of alkylbenzene sulfonate caused an appreciable reduction in Rf depending on oil fraction and Reynolds number. The mitigation percent was higher for a lower Reynolds number, reaching up to 96%.

Hybrid Approach for Advanced Monitoring and Forecasting of Fouling with Application to an Ethylene Oxide Plant

“…Nevertheless, a detectable temperature change does not happen until a critical thickness of deposit develops, making the approach insensible to the initial stages of fouling phenomena. , Finally, monitoring of heat transfer parameters is also used as a surrogate for fouling. These sets of parameters include the amount of heat transferred, the overall heat transfer coefficient, and the fouling resistance. ,− A selected set of literature examples are discussed below, and a table summarizing surrogate measurements for fouling can be found in literature …”

Joule–Thomson effect investigations on a cryogenic three‐fluid–three thermal communication heat exchanger

“…2,3 Many researchers 4,5 have presented an analytical method for multiple streams, one-dimensional HX to determine temperature distribution for all the fluids with an assumption that no multiple eigenvalues exist in the solution. The variety of configurations of a two-fluid HX available are tube-intube HX [6][7][8] and tube with a helical coil 9 ; and for a three-fluid HX, the two basic configurations are tube-in-tube HX 10 and tube-in-tube with a helical coil carrying the third fluid. 11 The researchers [12][13][14][15] presented an explicit/iterative solution for directional dependence for the class of three-fluid HX.…”

Influence of a curved conical turbulator on heat transfer augmentation in a helical double‐pipe heat exchanger

“…With an augmentation in the volumetric flow rate of the helical tube side fluid and outer annulus side fluid, the overall heat transfer coefficient rises, and the effectiveness declines for heat transfer from the helical tube side fluid to outer annulus side fluid in both parallel flow and counter flow configurations. Hasan et al 30 investigated the oil fouling in double‐pipe heat exchanger and using a surface‐active agent for the flow of a dispersion fluid containing different dispersed oil fractions in water. The effect of the dispersed oil fraction (5 and 10%vol) and temperature (35°C and 55°C) on the oil fouling rate was studied and discussed under turbulent flow conditions for both hot and cold fluids.…”