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NDT Forum: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection

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06:30 Jun-10-2011 Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection
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Bong Jin Son Engineering, Inspection, C orrosion, Material, SK Innovation, South Korea, Joined Apr 2008
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Are there anybody who knows a lot about Internal rotaing inspection system for heat exchanger tube? I have one question. What is the difference between inside corrosion and outside corrosion of heat exchanger tube inspection? I heard that IRIS can detect tube outside wall loss less than inside wall loss? Is it correct? And what is the minimum remaining thickness of tube outside which IRIS can detect? This question comes from the problem in my plant. There was a 304 stainless steel heate exchanger tube with 1.5" O.D. and 2.77mm thickness which had leaking due to tube outside corrosion with general corrosion and pitting. Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Bong Jin Son on 06:30 Jun-10-2011 (Opening). Dear Bong, IRIS is an application where you can find both the ID and OD pitting clearly. It is not that you will only get OD piting and you will lose ID pitting. But for the minimum thickness that you have asked, i m sorry that i need to ask to an expert. Are you having an IRIS system with you? If so you can check with yourself in the SS 304 calibration tube with 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% FBH drilled on from the OD.

19:01 Jun-11-2011 sudheer

04:00 Jun-14-2011 Bong Jin Son

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to sudheer on 19:01 Jun-11-2011 . Our IRIS guy says that minimum remaining thickess which IRIS can detect is 0.6~0.8mm. That means that even though real remaining thickess due to corrosion(such as general or pitting) is 0.3mm, IRIS consider remaining thickness as 0.6~0.8mm. C an anybody tell me about this in detail? I know UT fairly and it is not difficult for me to understand what you mean.

05:54 Jun-16-2011

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Bong Jin Son on 04:00 Jun-14-2011 .

K.S.Venkataraman Director, ESC ON TEC HNOLOGIES, Malaysia, Joined Oct 2005

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The minimum thickness detection threshold of IRIS is indeed around 0.6-0.8mm and is partly characteristic of the probe design and also due to the settings that are used for wall thickness detection in IRIS. The problem is that any minimum thickness below the the blanking threshold (which is around 0.6 to 0.7mm for 20 MHz and 0.8 to 1.0mm for 15Mhz transducers) will be indicated to be having equal thickness as the blanking value. In such situations, the operator can try and fine tune signals to see if they are deeper marginally, however finding remaining wall thickness as low as 0.3mm is next to impossible with IRIS. With Pitting C orrosion or general thinning on the Tube OD, this problem is unavoidable, however, the same is not true for ID pitting where delay in arrival times of the ID echoes can be equated to the depth of wall loss using velocity of Ultra sound in water. If you have further queries, do email me at venkat@escon-ndt.com Hope the above information clarifies your doubt

16:42 Jun-17-2011

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to K.S.Venkataraman on 05:54 Jun-16-2011 . Dear Friends,

S V Swamy Engineering, - Material Testing Inspection & Quality C ontrol, Retired from Nuclear Fuel

I have been following the discussion with interest and am happy to say that I am learning from it (I am just aware of IRIS but have not had first hand experience with it). For the specific application (thin tubes of 2.77 mm thickness), I would try Eddy C urrent Testing. With the right coil design and frequency selection, it should be possible to detect pitting

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C omplex , India, Joined Feb 2001
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NDT Forum: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection

corrosion. Regards Swamy

19:27 Jun-21-2011

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Bong Jin Son on 06:30 Jun-10-2011 (Opening).

Lalit Mohan Kothari C onsultant, -, On ..IOC L and BARC (Bhabha Atomic Research C entre).etc, India, Joined Jan 2003
128

Son, In general heat exchanger tube are inspected by EDDY current testing from inside for any imperfection in metal surface UT surface wave also helpful in this regard. But from out side there is no approaches for the all the tubes from outside. There is a lot of difference in out side corrosion and inside corrosion as one side is process fluid (hot) and other side is water (cold) . As corrosion is depend upon the tendencies of fluid and water and above all metallurgies of exchangers and operating conditions. So for water side corrosion any water treatment co can help you in this regard . and process side you also can consult process specialty chemical co. So my point of view any UT method is better then Eddy current testing for heat exchangers as UT can inspect opposite sides also . I am not to much familiar with IRIS. My dear BONG JIN SON any method can detect only loss of thickness any change of od/id can predict whether it is from out side our from inside . Thanks & Regard

10:46 Jul-11-2011 Yuvaraj

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Bong Jin Son on 06:30 Jun-10-2011 (Opening). Dear Bong, Now we are doing New Method Heat Exchanger Inspection called APR ( Acoustic Pulse Reflectometric) use by Acoustic Eye system this is 10 time faster then current method visit our website www.acousticeye.com asia service provider www.rutledgeglobal.com

11:10 Jul-14-2011

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Yuvaraj on 10:46 Jul-11-2011 .

Saju Xavier NDT Inspector, AXIS, Saudi Arabia, Joined May 2011
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Yuvaraj, heard about the new APR technology. From the technique description what I understand it's good to detect leaks and may work for ID defects too ..Do you have any experience using APR for detecting tube OD defects ( pitting,wear , fretting etc) ?

01:49 Jan-05-2013 billy1992!!!!

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Saju Xavier on 11:10 Jul-14-2011 . Hi!I would ask them one question about a C omplex plant heat exchange and reheat...C ould you tell me if the air supply change in this cycle compared to the basic cycle with one compressor,one turbine and a combustion champer... thank you, Bill

21:26 Jan-07-2013

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Bong Jin Son on 06:30 Jun-10-2011 (Opening).

C saba Hollo RSO, QA Rep, Acuren Group Inc., C anada, Joined Feb 2010
239

This type of exchanger tubing lends itself well to Eddy C urrent internal coil methods, provided the tube IDs are accessible. Most damage mechanisms can be detected, and some quite accurately quantified with this method. This is suitable for a primary examination method An IRIS examination to prove up some of the more severe external defects would be prudent. It would be considered a secondary examination method, as the reasons for lost data on IRIS scans may be well outlined on the eddy current examinations. The Acoustic Eye, while quick and handy, has difficulty resolving some of the damage mechanisms that eddy current examination can readily find. If all you want to do is find which tube is leaking, then this technology would be suitable as a primary inspection method.

10:23 Jan-08-2013 Ezhilarasu

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Saju Xavier on 11:10 Jul-14-2011 .

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NDT Forum: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection

The OD defects are not possible to detect with this APR.. when you have large number of tube to be inspected in short span of shut down APR is fast screening tool for internal defects with less tube cleaning compared to IRIS (pristine cleaning) and hopefully it won't require much cleaning in SS, but in C S it requires equivalent cleaning required for RFET.

13:50 Jan-09-2013

Re: Heat exchanger tube outside corrosion inspection In Reply to Bong Jin Son on 06:30 Jun-10-2011 (Opening).

Son, I would recommend following up any low readings that were in question with a common high frequency bobbin style transducer using common f90, 1/2 f90 and 2 f90 practices on a common James Scalf eddy current set such as a Miz-19e, Miz-20 or Nortec Work Station. This of course would require NDT Inspector, , Royal C anadian Air Force, a representative test piece to be manufactured with low end wall loss defects machined into it. Utilizing this set up, as it is a direct comparison test, you can determine the wall loss in the C anada, tubing in question (as long as the material between the test piece and the tubing is the same or Joined Oct 2012 74 conductively similar) reliably down below 0.3mm. I recently did a fuel vent line for an aircraft that had outer wall corrosion and reliably measured down to approximately 0.08mm remaining wall thickness measured from the internal surface using a 150 kHz absolute bobbin probe and a Miz-19e and a test piece machined incrementally in 0.05mm divisions. This took a bit of work and time to set up but if you have your test piece manufactured and conventional eddy current set ready to go ahead of time then it is simply a matter of running your IRIS system and when a suspect area reveals itself back it up with the alternative C onventional Eddy C urrent if your customer will accept the information. I would think they would as it is more reliable and repeatable for low end data than the IRIS System is for very thin wall inspections. Hope this helps...

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