Fired Heaters and Shell & Tube Heat Exchangers Assessment Checklist

October 11, 2018

Direct-fired heaters are classed as complex constructs. The fire heats a gas or liquid. Perhaps the flame directly burns an object. Industrial furnaces slot into that latter category. As for shell and tube heat exchangers, those vessels use fired heat, too, but this time the thermal energy is indirectly applied. Whatever the form, then, a checklist is mandated, one that'll secure the two heating architectures and determine their safety classifications.

Writing the Specs Sheet

Supplied to the client and kept on record as a duplicate back at the fabrication facility, the specs sheet contains important information. The fired heaters and shell and tube heat exchanger's assessment checklist can't really get off to a flying start until this important document is properly compiled. The revisions carried out on the pressure vessel are recorded on here, as are the coil pressures/temperatures, heated fluid mediums, and the following engineering criteria:

• Burner information
• Mechanical and electrical design specs
• Control panels and instrumentation
• Safety measures

Under miscellaneous items, the document creator also adds skid-mounted or plinth mounted information, plus any and all system accessories.

A Comprehensive Shell and Tube Assessment Checklist

And the above bulleted shortlist is only the beginning. The checklist centres around both the fabrication and inspection procedures, and there's also room for vendor-specific instructions, plus the client installation's unique system configuration. The BTU's supplied by the pressure vessels are, of course, specified and checked to provide a healthy safety margin. Inspection ports are assessed, drainage points inspected, fabrication and welding methods elucidated, and even the transportation method receives a passing grade, as long as it satisfies the design staff and inspectors, of course. From here, the paperwork builds up as a stack to include the tubular or plated architecture, the gas or liquid flashpoints, and numerous other critically important engineering data.

Creating a Substantial Paper Trail

If the fabrication and commissioning work seemed to take an age, wait until all of the paperwork is collated. There are engineering reports to conduct on fired heaters. Flow dampers and vessel burner drawings are collected and added to the stack. Welding inspection checklists are appended to the primary engineering checklist, and there's still the matter of the thermostatically controlled circuitry and fuel supply to record. It's a long, arduous process, this authoring of the vessel assessment checklist, and there are no shortcuts.

Looking at that stack on a head engineers' desktop, the assessment checklist is used to check and double check the functional and safety-centric features of fired heaters and indirect fired heat exchangers. There are manuals to write, final reports to transcribe, maintenance programs and costs to decide, and the engineer responsible is about to earn his salary as he/she digs into the work.

Contact Details

Fusion - Weld Engineering Pty Ltd
ABN 98 068 987619

1865 Frankston Flinders Road,
Hastings, VIC 3915

Ph: (03) 5909 8218

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