(77a) Air-Cooled Heat Exchanger Reliability

Air-Cooled Heat Exchangers (ACHE’s), sometimes called Air Coolers or Fin-Fans®, are used in a variety of applications in refineries, petrochemical plants, gas treating plants, compressor stations, power plants, and other industrial applications.  Many times these processes are critical to the operation of the plant and an outage to the ACHE’s or operation at less than design duty will cause the plant to shut down or operate at reduced capacity.  The impact on the plant can be severe and may result in significant loss of revenue to the operator.  This paper will describe the operation of ACHE’s and identify critical components that could fail and result in reduced cooling capacity.  We will also identify maintenance practices and procedures that would either reduce the probability of component failure or reduced heat exchange capability.