Floating head heat exchangers maintenance
Posted: 11 Sep 2025, 11:19
Looking for some good material to provide inputs on maintenance of floating head heat exchangers.
The maintenance starts with the bundle pulling activity to start inspection of the shell, tube bundle and all other remaining components.
And to pull the bundle out, distributor, back cover, and floating head are required to be removed.
Hydrojetting and necessary tube inspection are required to be made and at the same time shell has to be cleaned and offered for inspection.
Completion of these activites would trigger the installation of tube bundle back in the shell.
This will follow with the installation of test ring with gasket, both for the distributor and the floating (back) side to perform shell side hydrotesting. During this activity, if the leak is identified from the tube side, that is required to be plugged.
Once first shell side testing is done, distributor side and the floating head is required to be installed back with new gaskets to start the tube side testing. Now during this testing, check for the distributor end gasket, and floating head gasket.
The final step would be to perform the shell side testing after installation of back cover with gasket. Within this test, check for shell side gasket, and the back cover gasket.
arcpro, a lot to be done by the maintenance team, here.