Germany’s mycon GmbH, a sister company of industrial cleaning firm Kipp Umwelttechnik GmbH, has supported the cleaning of shell and tube heat exchangers during the annual shutdown of a gas producer located in the Gulf region.

For many years mycon uses the self-developed TubeMaster process for cleaning tubes and tube bundle heat exchangers. One of the focus is cleaning of sulphur condensers. In gas production, the sulphur content could be up to 30 per cent or more and this leads to deposits in the tubes of the heat exchangers and considerable energy losses.

The company supplied its TubeMaster systems for the cleaning of sulphur condensers in gas production in the Gulf region, which successfully cleaned and polished even small dimensioned inner tubes of tube bundle heat exchangers, the company said in a statement.

According to Dr Hiren Gandhi, project manager at mycon GmbH, mycon supplies TubeMaster systems to the Gulf States for years and, if required, can take care of the entire cleaning process on site.

mycon expands application possibilities

“Up to now, cleaning has been carried out completely manually. Particularly when cleaning tube bundle heat exchangers with tube diameter over 40 mm, considerable force is required for cleaning. The customer from the Gulf region particularly appreciated the good service provided by mycon GmbH for process optimisation, especially for the customer’s processes,” Dr Gandhi said.

NEW POSSIBILITIES

Mycon expands the application possibilities for the TubeMaster process so that inner tube surfaces can be additionally polished exactly as required. This makes longer cleaning intervals, shorter cleaning times and possibility of the production increment. In addition, mycon now also offers the TubeMaster process as an automated system, which is tailored exactly to the respective requirements of the customer.

The company installs the entire system and, if required, also supplies a blasting abrasive tailored to the requirements. At the customer’s request, the cleaning can be accompanied by employees of mycon. Its sister company, Kipp Umwelttechnik, also offers the cleaning of tubes and tube bundle heat exchangers using TubeMaster as a service.

TUBEMASTER PROCESS

The TubeMaster process can be used for cleaning and polishing tubes with an inner tube diameter of 3 mm or more. The most common application is the cleaning of tube bundle heat exchangers. TubeMaster cleans tubes from almost all materials with individual solutions: steel, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass, bronze, titanium, graphite, glass fibre and many more, the company tatement said.

Removal of hard residues from sensitive graphite tube bundle heat exchangers is possible

SUCCESSFUL CLEANING

A customer’s paint shop uses heating and cooling coils as well as plate and tube bundle heat exchangers. These must be cleaned at regular intervals. mycon recently received an order for the cleaning of a tube bundle heat exchanger made of stainless steel. Some of the tubes of the shell-and-tube heat exchanger were completely blocked. Previous cleaning of the exchanger had been carried out by burning out. The resulting residues were deposited in a thin, hard layer on the inner tube surfaces. This could only be determined after the first cleaning cycle. But this layer could also be completely removed in a second cleaning cycle, it claimed.

REMOVAL OF HARD RESIDUES

Even the hardest residues can be removed from sensitive surfaces, as shown by the example of cleaning a graphite heat exchanger. The inner tube surfaces of the shell-and-tube heat exchanger were exposed to extremely hard, multilayer residues over the entire length of 3000mm. It was not possible to remove the residues using chemicals. Due to the sensitive pipe material, cleaning with high-pressure water was also not possible. This would have led to the destruction of the pipes. Kipp Umwelttechnik, the sister company of mycon, therefore used the TubeMaster process developed by mycon for cleaning. With the help of a special application of the process, the entire length of the heat exchanger could be completely cleaned.

As a sister company to the service business Kipp Umwelttechnik, mycon is involved with the development, production and sale of new products and automation technologies. It currently supplies to customers in approx 40 countries.

In the field of industrial cleaning, Kipp Umwelttechnik is the specialist for thorough and gentle cleaning in industry and for building cleaning.

 It was founded in 1991 as a sister company to the construction company Jens W Kipp Tiefbau GmbH, which has existed since 1971. Both companies are businesses managed by entrepreneurs.