Besides high pressure jet cleaning, is stainless steel SS 304 shot of size 2 mm. to 4 mm. effective in cleaning scaled heat exchanger SS 316 tubes?

Heat Exchanger Cleaning - Alternative to Hydro jet asked in the forum HIgh Pressure hydro-jet cleaning is the most common method adopted for heat exchnager tube cleaning. Grit blast using S.S 2 mm to 4 mm balls cleaning may create rough surface finish inside the tubes. This will act as nucei for further deposit accumulation and also may be site /nuclei for inceasing susceptitbility for corrosion / pitting in S.S. This is not normally attempted in cleaning of hard deposits for cleaning of S.S heat exchanger tubes. If deposit is too hard, some try ciruclation of dilute acide before shut down of the plant is done in exceptional cases to loosen the deposits before doing hydro-ject blast cleaning. The only limitation is the acid wash shuold be followed by thorough closed water circulation and draining to ensure no acid traces or left in the tubes - especially if the heat exchanger is "U" tube bundles. This method of cleaning is more or similar to removal of loose scales or deposis in high pressure water boiler components before commissioning. This is frist a closed loop system followed by thorough open water cirucaltion to ensure that acid traces are not left in the boiler components. Trust this is of help to your question C.V.Srinivasan Nishi Engineers Pvt Ltd Chennai India July 08, 2004 E-mail:nishi@vsnl.com >Sir: > >Thank you for your interest in our technical discussion >forums. We are not familiar with that method for cleaning >heat exchanger tubes. Perhaps one of our other members will >respond. > > > >David Hendrix >The Hendrix Group Inc.