Design and Off-Design Performance Evaluation of Heat Exchanger in an Offshore Process Configuration

Abstract

This research evaluates the thermal performance of an industrial heat exchanger for process in the offshore industry. Steady state monitoring and performance data were collected from 3-E-401 heat exchanger in an offshore environment. Design and off-design evaluation was carried out us-ing capacity ratio, effectiveness, Log Mean Temperature Difference (LMTD), heat duty, and overall heat transfer coefficient as performance indicators. Three scenarios were presented and Hysys ® V8.7 software was used to model the process. The results showed that the best thermal perform-ance of the heat exchanger in terms of capacity ratio, effectiveness, heat duty, LMTD, and overall heat transfer coefficient is 94%, 85.5%, 88%, 88.7% and 71% respectively, of the design values. This best performance was reached at 9.9% fouling and heat loss reduction in the heat exchange process. An increase in fouling and heat loss gradually reduced the thermal performance of the heat exchanger. Therefore a proactive maintenance action and condition monitoring in every eight weeks is required to sustain and improve the performance as evaluated.