Chiller Tube Cleaning – An Overview

November 9, 2017 | Blog

Close-up of corroded heat exchanger tubes

In the large buildings, chillers are the single largest consumer of energy. As the energy price rises, it is often considered as the single as well as the potential source of energy savings. These chillers with their large electronic controls and microprocessors require the trained technician to maintain it and see through all the problems. Preventive maintenance – everything from keeping daily to weekly and monthly to annually operational reviews can only yield the optimum performance of these chiller tubes. Chiller tube cleaning is not as easy as it seems to be as it requires all the base points to be covered and demands the best chiller tube cleaning equipment. It includes several parts that are to be cleaned separately and accurately.

Major items of concern:

Refrigerant

First of all, it is quite essential to maintain the refrigerant so as to decrease the load on the compressor. This minimized compressor load will itself increases the system efficiency.

Tube Cleaning

It is the matter of fact that chiller typically has several miles of tubing and thus it is important to keep these tubes as clean as possible. Chiller efficiency is greatly affected by the cleanliness of the heat transfer surfaces than any other factor. Efficiency declines rapidly if contaminants are present on the chiller tube surfaces. Their presence can increase thermal resistance and chiller finds it hard to meet the demands.

Water Treatment

Some sort of water treatment is required when condensers use an open cooling source so as to control scale, biological growth, and corrosion which can lead to the fouling of the condenser. Chiller condenser tube cleaning is very much important so as to enhance the life of this potential energy saving source. One should keep in the mind the fact that the more the condenser becomes fouled, the more energy it takes to satiate the demand placed on it.

Lubrication

Lubrication is yet another item of concern while talking about chiller tube cleaning. Basically, it is the lab test which should be done annually so as to keep the track for moisture content, acids and other contaminants that can affect its performance.

Motors and other electrical equipment

Chiller motor is the largest consumer of energy and probably the most important part of this energy source and hence its maintenance is quite important. Make sure that cooling air vents are properly cleaned the shaft seals should be checked on the regular basis. In order to achieve peak performance, wiring and other electrical connections should be checked from time to time.