Research on the Online Cleaning of Heat Exchanger in Crude Oil Processing System

Fouling in heat exchangers for crude oil not only increases the heat resistance affecting the heat transfer efficiency, but also enhance the flow resistance increasing the energy consumption and even leading to safety problems. This paper performs a special kind of cleaning ball made of stainless steel fiber and boron-silicon rubber which is compatible to crude oil, to clean the tube side of a shell and tube heat exchanger. The online cleaning experimental results show that the collecting time of cleaning ball in the automatic tube cleaning system for oil (ATCSO) increase as the number of cleaning balls increases. The online cleaning effects are satisfying by using the cleaning balls since the crude oil temperature at the outlet of the heat exchanger increases quickly after a short time cleaning, which means that the heat transfer is improved effectively.