A refinery has for decades been using tubes in CuNi 70/30 for several seawater cooled heat exchangers. Over the years the refinery has been facing a lot of corrosion issues with these heat exchangers, leading to frequent leakages, plugging of tubes and ultimately complete retubing of the tube bundles. Apart from high maintenance costs, this also leads to production losses with associated lost earnings. This paper will show the long-term cost of the CuNi 70/30 heat exchanger solution, and compare this to an initially more expensive stainless steel solution but which has a lower long-term maintenance cost. The cost calculations are based on data supplied from fabricators, material suppliers and end-users.

Subject
Costs, Materials, Materials performance, Tubes, Refineries, Seawater, Copper alloys, Corrosion losses, Heat exchangers, Equipment, Sulfides, Stainless steel, Maintenance
Keywords:
Corrosion resistant alloys, Maintenance, Seawater Corrosion
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2022
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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