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All
liquid/heat medium heater design is crucial to the success of the plant
or unit that the heater services. Why is this the case? The main
reason is that the fired heater is often the only source of heat to the
hot oil or heat medium circuit and thus if the heater does not work, the
plant has no alternative except to shutdown.
One
reason for a heater shutdown is exceeding the film temperature of your
heating medium. A heating oil usually has a maximum film temperature
such that beyond this temperature, degradation or breakdown of the
fluid rapidly occurs. This leads to rapid fouling of the heater and to
early and often shutdown(s) of the heater, and subsequently the entire
unit. Proper attention to the design of the heater avoids this
problem. ThermaTran uses a tube-by-tube analysis, which
allows us to avoid exceeding the film temperatures at the design
conditions.
This
method also provides for accurate convection section design in
heavy-viscous liquid processes. In this section, the low inside heat
transfer rate dominates the overall rate calculation, which is not the
norm. An improper design in this portion of the heater can cause
an error in the overall performance of the heater of as much as 20% and
the resultant over firing of the burners to make up for this error will
cause the degradation and fouling noted above.
ThermaTran not
only provides a competently designed heater but also has provided all
the necessary support items for each heater such as:
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Full
combustion control/burner management packages in fully assembled and
tested condition.
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Complete pump and surge tank systems with all necessary piping mounted
on a common modular skid.
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Complete control panels suitable for either local mounting or remote
control room mounting.
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Full
inlet and outlet piping including orifice runs and other
instrumentation.
Besides
complete fired heaters and systems, ThermaTran has
designed and manufactured a number of specialized heat medium convection
sections in heaters primarily built to service other processes and for
turbine waste heat recovery.
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