The details of the material selection for seawater heat exchanger tubes, the establishment of the design procedure of the equipment using the material and the application of the material to the equipment in a commercial chemical plant are described in the present paper. The corrosion mechanism of stainless steel tubes for seawater cooling is also discussed.

Firstly, in order to choose the most suitable tube materials for the equipment, 13 kinds of commercial stainless steel were evaluated by means of the following studies:

  1. Electrochemical studies of pitting characteristics in seawater

  2. Corrosion test with model heat exchanger

Based on the results of these studies, two duplex stainless steels available on the market were found to be the most suitable tube materials for the equipment. One has been developed quite recently and the other has been widely used as heat exchanger tubes in chemical plants, power plants, and ships.

Secondly, the performance of many commercial seawater heat exchangers adopting the latter steel was extensively investigated in order to establish the design procedure of the equipment adopting these two steels. As a result, the safety area where these tubes could be used without corrosion trouble were defined by using the flow rate of the seawater and the skin temperature of the tubes on the seawater side.

Finally, a seawater heat exchanger made of these two steels was incorporated in a commercial plant and its performance is being investigated in order to compare the corrosion resistance of these two steels and to confirm the above established design procedure.

Subject
Pits, Steel surfaces, Materials, Tubes, Inspection, Seawater, Heat exchangers, Steel, Pitting, Corrosion resistance, Deposit corrosion, Stainless steel, Test specimen
© 1981 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
1981
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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