Air-cooled cast aluminum heaters the solution to costly water-cooling issues

More often than not, water-cooled cast-ins (cast aluminum heaters) are discarded because their cooling tubes have become blocked. Often the heater itself can still heat, but the cooling tubes are blocked. The result: a perfectly good heater ends up in the trash.

Typically, if one heater fails due to blockage, the other heaters are not far behind. Water cooling is an effective but expensive solution, as water must be treated, and pumps, piping systems and cooling towers must be maintained.

Another issue: cooling tubes undergo thermal shock repeatedly every day because running cooling water into a hot cooling tube puts the tubes under stress. Sometimes cooling tubes crack due to this repeated thermal shock. If that happens, water will leak out of the cast-in where the tube enters the heater or at other random points. There is no recourse once a cast-in starts to leak water other than to replace it. 

What’s the solution? Convert to air-cooled cast aluminum heaters. 

With air-cooled units, a loss of cooling is easy to remedy. All you have to do is replace the blower, which is available in a variety of power options. In addition, the exhaust hot air from an air-cooled cast-in system can assist in heating the plant in the winter. And in the summer, the exhaust hot air can be ducted outside.

Process Heaters specializes in process heating equipment. Contact the company for information on its air-cooled cast aluminum heaters.

• Tweet