Improved Heat Exchanger Performance Achieved Through Improved Condensate Drainage - 18478
Hanford's 242-A Evaporator has had the mission of reducing waste volume in the Hanford Tank Farms since the late 1970's. At the very heart of the 242-A evaporation process is the E-A-1 reboiler, a heat exchanger which adds heat to the waste, and the vacuum condenser system, a three-stage condenser/ejector system which condenses the waste vapors and provides the vacuum at which the evaporation process operates. Over a long period of time, significant degraded performance has been observed in the heat exchangers in both the heating system and in the vacuum condensing system. This degraded performance was indicative of degraded conditions in equipment and/or piping associated with both the heating and vacuum condenser systems. However, in searching for degraded condition in these systems, 242-A engineering also discovered that both systems contained design errors in the condensate drainage associated with all heat exchangers in both systems. By addressing the condensate design errors in addition to correcting the degraded conditions, system performance was restored and even possibly improved. All heat exchangers in the heating and vacuum condensing systems are shell and tube type heat exchangers. Both have liquid on the tube side and vapor on the shell side (in the case of the reboiler the liquid is tank waste and the vapor is 10 lb heating steam, and in the case of the vacuum condensers the liquid is cooling water and the vapor is waste vapor). In both systems, engineering proposed that the vapor condensate was backing up into the heat exchanger, resulting in added poor performance. By focusing on basic heat exchanger system design, projects were initiated to redesign the condensate drainage of these systems and re-plumb the condensate drain lines. Data collected before and after the replumbing provides evidence that the corrected drain lines from the heat exchangers improved the performance of the system as a whole, and in the case of the reboiler, removed a potentially damaging steam condensate water hammer condition. (author)