Heat Transfer ABC B.V.

Heat Transfer ABC B.V. updated their phone number.

Strategic Planning meeting with Craig Thomas and Alexis Gauthard from NEOTISS High Performance Tubes in restaurant Woods in Leiden.

We have made available on You Tube 4 video's : Masterclass Helixchanger UK & Dutch version and ABC Heat Exchanger Course Module 1 UK & Dutch version. For the Dutch version there are 12 modules available on www.leama.nl and the cost is € 99/module. (www.youtube.com and search for bert boxma or heat transfer abc)

Technology Transfer: Sharing know-how is important.
Sustainable heat exchangers : Big Business.
Fouling in heat exchangers in industrialized countries, e.g. The Netherlands, is representing a percentage of 0.25% of the GNP (1), which is €1.75 Billion per annum. If engineering companies and end users have sufficient knowledge of heat exchangers and make the right selections, savings will be substantial.
During the last 20 years numerous heat exchanger technologies have been developed. But a conservative approach of the (petro-chemical) industry has led to minimum implementation of these fouling mitigation technologies. But there is a growing need to increase the availability and reliability of plants. The improvement of run length, fouling abatement and reduction of green-house gas emissions are hot topics. Improved heat exchanger technologies can play an important role to achieve these goals. Bert Boxma, ex-Chairman of NLAHX (Netherlands Advanced Heat Exchangers) from Agentschap NL (SenterNovem) supported by Ministry of Economic Affairs, has stimulated for years engineers to use these fouling mitigation and energy saving heat exchanger technologies. In discussion with Bert Boxma, an international heat exchanger expert, is observing a gap in know-how in design and selection of heat exchangers.
Bert holds a Bachelor degree Chemical Engineering and has gained his 37 years of experience at different positions as Process Engineer, Heat Exchanger Specialist, Project Engineer, Senior Mechanical Engineer, Business Development Manager, Trainer and Trouble shooter. Previous companies involved are Badger (Raytheon, Washington), GEA (Kelvion), FLUOR, Mc Dermott (CB&I, ABB) Lummus Heat Transfer, where Bert has developed his expertise. Also he was the first Chairman and founder of the first HTRI’s Communication Committee (1994-1997). Further he was Chairman of NLAHX from 1998-2009 and was member of Tasc-Force ISO16812 and the Crude Oil Fouling Working Party by ESDU in UK from 1999-2003.
Today he is an independent consultant and founded his company Heat Transfer ABC B.V. in 2006. Bert is sharing his knowledge by providing heat exchanger training. Traveling is in his blood and many countries has been visited to perform training. He started with his exchanger course in The Netherlands and Belgium. Other countries e.g. Spain, Qatar, Oman, UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Iran followed. These travels gave him insight information of local design procedures. In order to keep up with the high demand for heat exchanger courses, he started a joint venture with LEAMA in The Netherlands to offer the popular course TEMA & HTRI Heat Exchanger Cost Saving Management as an online course. For engineers and post graduates an ideal opportunity to learn on materials behind their computer. Not spending time for travel and making extra costs.
Choose the right heat exchanger type or technology for a certain process application.
Selection of a heat exchanger technology is important for grass root plants but also in refurbishment situations. Questions like : ”In which environment the heat exchanger need to perform” and “What is Total Life Cycle Cost” needs proper attention. With long term planning one can save costs and energy. So acting is better than talking about new technologies. Make proper decisions and do not hesitate to consult an expert or follow a course to upgrade your knowledge.

(1) Heat Exchanger Fouling, Mitigation and Cleaning Technologies by Prof.Dr.Ing. H. Müller-Steinhagen, ISBN 0 85295 436 0, Publico, Essen Germany, 2000.


Shell & Tube Heat Exchanger
The Shell & Tube Heat heat exchanger is still by far the most used heat exchanger type in the world and they exist more than one century. Before the Second World War, the methods in thermal and mechanical design of this type were numerous. This heat exchanger type is a pressure vessel and in the early day’s exchangers did explode due to failures in design. It was 1941 when the TEMA standard was born. TEMA (Tubular Exchanger Manufacturer’s Association) (www.tema.org) is recognized by engineers as the “Bible” for Shell & Tube Heat Exchangers. Besides TEMA, we have ISO 16812 for the specification of Shell & Tube Heat Exchangers. Operating at very high pressures and temperatures the shell and tubular is the only possible solution. Hot and cold stream are running in and around the tubes and heat transfer is taking place at the tube wall. Same principles apply when the velocity at the wall increases the higher the heat transfer will be. At the tube wall a microscopic layer is responsible for this heat transfer. The thinner this layer the better the heat transfer. The higher heat transfer will result in the most economic and smallest size heat exchanger.
Points of interest
Important aspects while designing shell and tubular are fouling, tube vibration and the improvement of heat transfer on both side of the tube. These drivers have led to creative and innovative solutions. In presentations at the NLAHX meetings, have stimulated the members to make a step forward in energy savings.
To further enhance the shellside heat transfer and reduce fouling one could select a Helixchanger® Heat Exchanger. Bert had a particular interest in this product when working at ABB from 1998-2006 to explain the product in full all over the world during presentations. The number of references went from 13 (1998) to 1500 in 2006. Today the number of references has increased to the level of 5000 worldwide.
Helixchanger® Heat Exchanger
A Helixchanger® Heat Exchanger is a shell & tube type, but now provided with baffles (quadrants) drilled in an angle. The shellside medium is flowing in a helical flow leaving no place for dead zones what happens in conventional baffled exchangers. Shellside fouling is minimized and the run length is improved by a factor of four as reported by EXXONMOBIL. This major oil company has installed approximately 10% of the total installed Helixchanger® units in the world. The invention was made forty years ago by the mechanical engineer called Jan Nemcansky. During 1994, ABB (now Mc Dermott) Lummus Heat Transfer has bought the technology from Vuchz (Czech Republic) and further developed it.
Masterclass Helixchanger® heat exchanger
In this Masterclass the Helixchanger® Heat Exchanger will be explained in full. Graphics, tables and many pictures of live equipment will be shown. The run time of this Masterclass is 1 hour and 15 minutes. Examples of grass root and refurbished equipment will be discussed. Total Life Cycle Cost savings of 35% are possible! Curious how to achieve this? LEAMA is offering you this Masterclass.
Copyright © by A.J. Boxma, CEO of Heat Transfer ABC B.V. 2020.

Leama homepage De ontwikkelingen in de techniek gaan razendsnel. We horen veel over 3D printen, robotisering, lasertechnologie, smart industrie, internet of things, enz. Er kan steeds meer. Om verder te kunnen ontwikkelen is een brede kennis over verschillende materialen en hun toepassingen onontbeerlijk. De basis...

Our previous post was related to an article published in ALURVS but this is a Dutch magazine. This post is referring to that article but now translated in English. I hope you enjoy the content. If you are interested in Heat Exchanger Course & Masterclass online, please visit www.leama.nl We will start to issue the Dutch version of the course first, however the Masterclass Helixchanger will be issued in Dutch and UK version very soon. Stay tuned on LEAMA (www.leama.nl) or www.heattransferabc.com

Another article being posted by ALURVS (Dutch) in their latest edition. Fouling in heat exchangers add up to 0.25% of industrialised countries GNP. For The Netherlands it is approx. € 1.75 Bio. Taken into account there are plenty fouling mitigation technologies available nowaday's, this is the time to use them to further reduce CO2 emmisions. Leama.nl has a JV agreement with ABC for distribution and recording of ABC’ Heat Exchanger courses & Masterclasses online. Courses are available in Dutch via www.leama.nl Courses in English will follow within 2 months.

This was the original Linked In text and picture from a Dutch Company Heat Exchanger Service: "Partially retubing of a bundle with 254 SMO tubes for one of our most important clients. Not an everyday material which needs the right tools and attention and craftmanship of our professional mechanics. Typical quality HES works!"

This is an excellent example of a wrong original designed impingement plate. As you can see it is also perforated. Impingement plates do cause jet streams sometimes as high 3 times the nozzle velocity resulting in fluid elastic tube vibration. Normally with a vibration analysis this will show up and this can be avoided by using impingement rods.

This post reached in 1 week more than 17000 page views (SHELL>200; EXXONMOBIL>50; JACOBS>50; FLUOR>50 etc.) and more than 180 likes and numbers are increasing every day!

One of the comments on Linked In was:

"Thanks Mr. Bert for the very important post. We have literally faced this issue during the pre-commissioning of RIL’s J3 Project at Jamnagar. Generally, it's a common belief among process engineers that Impingement plates are more reliable than the impingement rods, but the it’s not true. We did a rigorous HTRI rating of our critical exchangers identified based on TEMA Rho*v^2 criteria and further vibration analysis .xvib for those exchangers. It came to conclusions that velocities at the edge of the impingement plate (circular or rectangular) were unexpectedly high and was the prominent reasons for tube vibrations. Whereas, impingement rods, if fabricated well with the tubesheet and well supported (with less span length) were highly effective in reducing the bundle entrance velocity and hence the tube vibrations. One additional precaution to be taken care of while going for impingement rods is to support them well allowing less span length and provide full arc welds and screwed ramming into the tubesheet, otherwise they are worst to get affected by vibrations being entirely solid rods as compared to hollow tubes. We faced it in one of our exchangers where the impingement rods faced huge vibrations and finally hit the tubes."

Again this post has proven it's value.

When evaluating heat exchangers on tube vibration this case is a perfect example where initially HTRI does not provide you with a warning. From the Rating Data Sheet you can see a very high value for shell nozzle RhoV2 of 17000 kg/m.s2, but the program automatically puts in a plate for impingement protection. This plate is causing even more harm, as it generates a jet stream with velocities a factor 3 times higher than the nozzle velocity. (HTRI Report and CFD) Result is leaking and broken tubes and preventive plugging of affected tubes. This design would have been better, smaller and cheaper in a Helixchanger construction provided with larger shell nozzles. Never take the linesize for granted as the design size for the shell nozzles. Dare to specify a larger shell side nozzle. A simple reducer can be fitted in the line upstream the heat exchanger. Be carefull to specify impingement plate. In case impingement protection is required, please specify impingement rods. This will avoid situations as described above.

Strategic Planning Meeting with Tom and Alex from Cal Gavin.

Linked In responses of a recent ABC case study during 1 week!

Conventional baffle design however the baffle pitch is close to TEMA minimum (20% of shell id) and can create large E stream (baffle to shell clearance) which has a negative effect on MTD. Consider helical baffle in this type of designs.

ABC conducted the TEMA/HTRI Heat Exchanger Management & Cost Saving Course August 2016 via Petrosync in Kuala Lumpur. Participants are working on ABC's case studies on an individual basis. The last case study will be handled in small groups where the result per group is evaluated using HTRI software.

Fixed Tube Sheet (FXTS) heat exchanger provided with corrugated wavy fin tubes to improve heat transfer. Bundle was subject to excessive metal temperature differences and as the shell was not provided with a shell bellow the tube buckled and broke. It is very important when you design a FXTS type to determine the shell and tube metal temperatures for all process conditions. A check procedure is listed in ISO 16812 and the metal temperature calculation is listed in TEMA.
Software like Xist from HTRI is able to perform such metal temperature calculations, but the process engineer should list all possible conditions as a result of HAZOP. Rule of Thumb : No shell bellow is required when metal temperature shell-tube < 40 degrees Celcius when MOC's shell/tube are the same.

Another in-house training performed. Now in Bontang, Kalimantan Indonesia at the Badak LNG facilities. It was also great fun working with this nice group. Ratings marks 8-10. Instructor was pleased with that result. Good organised by Mrs.Briliant from Petrosync.

Result of shellside impingement resulting in erosion of upper row of tubes when Shell & Tubular design is not designed in accordance with TEMA recommendations wrt nozzle RhoV2

This afternoon I met Mr.Lim, Board of Management of PVC-MS / MEPCOM based Singapore, to discuss opportunities to train his engineers on the subject TEMA/HTRI Heat Exchanger Cost Saving Management.
ABC is invited to quote for training & engineering support in Singapore & Jakarta.

Today I went to the funeral of Dick Klaren. He was the inventor of the self cleaning heat exchanger called Klarex. By particle flow inside the tube the tube will stay clean. We discussed many times the combination of Helixchanger and Klarex at the time I was employed with ABB Lummus Heat Transfer. Both systems are no longer prototype anymore. I will remember Dick for his enthousiasm and deep knowledge in heat transfer solutions. His invention will concur the world in the race of reducing CO2 emmission. He died too soon.

Heat Transfer ABC B.V. is awarded with courses in Malaysia and Vietnam.

Semi robot welding tube-tubesheet.

F-shell configuration where the long baffle seal strip still has to be fixed to avoid leakage stream. Best seals are made of a multi layer lamella strip configuration from Kempchen. Patents of these strips have expired and other fabricators do offer the same quality products cheaper.

Excellent tube geometry for water-steam application with condensing steam outside the tube. Wavy structure is preventing condensate fill-up in between fins and cooling water fouling is minimized by the helical structure inside the tube which results in very high htc's. Used by French end-users in Power industry. Tube supplier is Vallourec who claims an heat transfer improvement of 40%. Tube is not available in HTRI's Xist low-fin tube databank.

Art Style Impingement Plate construction.

Four tubepass arrangement rotated H-type which can not be simulated in HTRI's program X-ist. Bundle protection by 3 rows of impingement rods.
This is a TEMA type X-flow with a non condensables (NC) outlet at the side of the heat exchanger. The 45 degrees rotated partitions allow the manufacturer to place a long baffle in order to create the NC outlet sideway and liquid bottom outlet.

Welcome to Heat Transfer ABC B.V.

Heat Exchanger Selection & Design: Do it right the first time! Heat Transfer ABC B.V. is organizing a 3-day’s heat exchanger seminar on March 26, 27 and April 2, 2015 in Rotterdam The Netherlands.
The course provides in depth presentation of the main types of industrial heat exchangers, their key features and aspects and provides practical guidelines for selecting the appropriate type for a specific process application based on Total Life Cycle Analysis. Course Rating : 9
More information see www.heattransferabc.nl or www.facebook.com/heattransferabc
Contact Bert Boxma, [email protected] or call T 0718883781, M 0651921969

heattransferabc.com Want to learn more about heat transfer & state of the art technologies? Heat Transfer ABC gives you an expert training!

Merry Christmas to all my ABC FB fans all over the world!

Nice example of a double-tubesheet closure used in designs to avoid hazardous situations when shellside and tubeside fluids form a dangerous mixture. This mechanical device can be simulated in HTRI Xist software.

Baffle overlap for tube support at rear head side of a split ring floating head "S" type heat exchanger. Please spot the window cut out in the full support baffle and last baffle. It is very important to choose the right window cut out in terms of tube vibration aspects. This bundle will rotate 90 degrees to it's final position so the slots for sliding strips will be located at the bottom. Baffle orientation will be perperdicular (horizontal) baffle cut.