Cleaning a Heat Exchanger Question

John B. · Jul 22, 2017

I'm needing to know what to use to clean the tubes that are full of sand/grit/dirt in a heat exchanger. The tubes are just big enough to let a dime coin fit snuggly and are 20ft long. Anyone have any experience cleaning tube bundles in a heat exchanger if so what did you use? Thanks in advance.

David G · Jul 22, 2017

You can use a tube brush, push from one end to the other, I am assuming you can get to both ends. The automatic cleaners use balls that are held in cages at the end of the tube, controller reverses flow which makes balls go down the tube and get caught in other end. It just cycles at ether time based intervals or differential pressure set points.

John B. · Jul 22, 2017

David, Thanks for the input. The ball & cage makes sense. The heat exchanger I'm working on is only accessable from one end unfortunately.

old · Jul 22, 2017

How about a reverse flush with a garden hose or pressure washer?? as in flush it out backwards for the air flow

504 · Jul 22, 2017

Go to a restaurant supply company and ask for coil and condenser cleaner. That stuff works like crazy,spray and wash off.

Steve@Advance · Jul 22, 2017

It's been a long time, but used to clean them with muriatic acid when they were scaled up. I don't remember the numbers, but we would circulate diluted acid while watching the PH. When As the PH would come up, add more acid. When it leveled off, they were clean. Then flush with water.

You could do the same thing, just watch to see when the reaction stops and they look clean.

If yours are scaled, they will need acid cleaning. If just plugged with sand they can probably be backwashed or rodded out.

jeffcat · Jul 22, 2017

Also a h3ck of a long metal tube hooked to an air hose. At the car shows you can buy those professional air guns that go all of the way up to 5 feet long. They work great on mower decks and such. The same tubing used for soda machines is flexable but is also a little on the stiff side. Ment to handle high pressure CO2 gas for the carbination. That stuff would be awesome! Yes, the more i think about this tubing the better I like the idea. We have it at work and blow plugged drains out. Stuff it in and block with a wet cloth. A CO2 tank has a WHOLE LOT of blow power !

Roger Tomfohrde · Jul 22, 2017

We use a tube cleaner that is a motorized brush on a hose setup for chillers to do that. Spent many hours rodding bundles on chillers.Just do not break a brush off.Can be messy.We would set the length with a hose clamp so we did not get to the end and break off. Good chemical treatment and then every other year would have them scanned for blemishes. Parts that were damaged could be closed off but did not see that done.

4520BW · Jul 22, 2017

I use to clean hundreds of them that had 1/4 tubes, we used a brush at spun and shot out water. Whit the new engines coming out with egr we were plug several a day. After some research we flushed them with rydlyme and saved us a lot of time. The test cell computer would alert us when the cooling valve was at 95% command and we would flush it before it plugged. The big chillers were cleaned with a brush on a cable. The new plate and frames we use phosphoric acid. It also work great on old tractor radiators.

Dick L · Jul 22, 2017

I have a pump and pump muriatic acid thru the ones on my injection molding machines. After that we take the ends off and use a wire brush with a 3/8 drill.

Dick L · Jul 22, 2017

I forgot to say when plugged solid we start with a number 9 wire size rod to punch a hole. Increase the size of the rod until we can get good flow with the pump.

DGinVT · Jul 22, 2017

When we had gas turbines, long steel brushes were used that went the full length of those tubes and they were use to clean out all the soot and other carbon. At best a very dirty job and very time consuming. May not fully answer your question.

dzc3 · Jul 23, 2017

Get a 1/4" sewer jetter hose, put a good jetter nozzle on the end. Use you pressure washer and carefully start it up the tube. Jetter nozzle will work it's way in. Add bigger hose and jetter nozzle later in the process if needed.

Jerry9N · Jul 23, 2017

My geothermal system has a heat exchanger that you clean using a .410 nylon brush with a shotgun cleaning rod. There are specialty companies that make brushes and rods for cleaning tube bundles, Weiler comes to mind. If it's as bad as you said, you might be better served in having it cleaned and eddy current tested.

Jerry

KSF · Jul 23, 2017

Where I used to work we had cooling tower water going through the heat exchangers and there was an accumulation of mud and debris in the tubes. We used a sand slurry solution to pump through the tubes to clean out the mud. The tubes were then blown out with air. These exchangers were 40 ft. long. The trick is to get a diaphragm type pump to pump a slurry solution. That may be beyond what you want to do.

John B. · Jul 25, 2017

The heat reclaimer reverses flow every 30 minutes. We run between 50k-55k gallon of laundry water thru it 5 days a week.

Cleaning a Heat Exchanger Question

John B.

Well-known Member

David G

Well-known Member

John B.

Well-known Member

old

Well-known Member

504

Well-known Member

Steve@Advance

Well-known Member

jeffcat

Well-known Member

Roger Tomfohrde

Member

4520BW

Well-known Member

Dick L

Well-known Member

Dick L

Well-known Member

DGinVT

Member

dzc3

Member

Jerry9N

Member

KSF

New User

John B.

Well-known Member

Similar threads