A large European refinery contacted Tube Tech looking for an innovative cleaning method for the fouled convection banks of three furnaces. The furnaces were so badly fouled that attempts to chemically clean and water jet from two existing side doors had failed and in fact had made the fouling worse after using local traditional contractors.
“We believe this is the first time the convection bank of a finned heater furnace has been cleaned back to production standard by using “between fin” cleaning technology. Whilst the radiant section had been cleaned previously by chemical means the convection bank was too heavily fouled to allow chemical cleaning. These convection banks within this particular heater furnace had not been cleaned for over 22 years. The resulting performance increase was immense.” As a result of this project, Tube Tech have since developed a prototype to clean certain heaters, furnaces with finned convection tubes without cutting panels in the side wall.”