Filtration Facts

Heat Exchanger Fouling Prevented With Payback In Less Than Six Months

  

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Heat exchanger fouling is a costly situation in terms of both (a) loss of water system efficiency and (b) maintenance costs, as well as (c) countless other problems it can cause in an HVAC or process water environment. When properly applied, filtration of the water and process fluids before they enter the heat exchanger can prevent fouling from occurring. For systems containing dirt, sediment and other solids, the savings can be huge, and can include water savings, energy savings, as well as others.

A multinational equipment manufacturer in the Midwestern U.S. faced this situation on their production line, where heat exchangers were repeatedly clogging and fouling due to scale in the process water. Among other problems, this made it very difficult for the heat exchanger to maintain the proper temperature for the water, wreaking havoc with the production process. The company tried using bag filters to solve the problem, but bags need to be emptied when they are filled. In this situation, the scale and other solids in the water was so great that the bags had to be replaced once every 5 weeks. The cost in materials and labor to change the bags was over $80,000 per year, and that did not include other costs being driven higher due to the lowered efficiency of the entire system or the lost production time.

A Better Filtration Solution
Frustrated by the costly and not very effective bag filter solution, the maintenance team at this large company continued to look for other solutions to their problem.  They found it -- a nearly maintenance-free filtration solution that also lowered water usage and kept the heat exchanger operating at maximum efficiency 24/7. It was a complete filtration solution that included a LAKOS Centrifugal Separator and purging system. The time it took for the reduced expenses of the new system (just heat exchanger cleaning costs alone) to pay back the costs to buy it and install it? Less than 6 months.

Download The Heat Exchanger Fouling Solution Case Study
Get more details about this situation, as well as the BEFORE and AFTER costs to clean the system. Heat exchangers are valuable pieces of equipment, and keeping them running efficiently will yield tremendous savings. Effective filtration is a great way to accomplish this goal.