What Is The Impact of Cleaning Plate Heat Exchangers on Energy Consumption?
Due to the specific construction of plate heat exchangers, their maintenance, cleaning, and component replacement require a high level of technical proficiency. Otherwise, not only will the expected results not be achieved, but serious faults such as equipment leakage, deformation, and even damage may occur. Therefore, most users hire original equipment manufacturers or specialized companies for maintenance and cleaning.
Through practical exploration, I have gradually mastered the methods of repairing, cleaning, and component replacement for plate heat exchangers. Self cleaning and maintenance of products used for cooling circulating water have saved expensive cleaning costs and achieved good results. On the other hand, after the fouling of the heat exchanger, its thermal resistance significantly increases. At this time, the refrigerant (or heat medium) fluid is not easy to transfer the refrigerant (or heat) to the exchanged working fluid side. At this time, even if the refrigerant (or heat medium) flow rate of the heat exchanger remains unchanged, its heat transfer efficiency will significantly deteriorate.
In this situation, if the process still requires maintaining the original exchange efficiency, it is necessary to increase the flow rate into the plate heat exchanger while increasing the inlet pressure, which results in a dual increase in energy consumption.
