CorLance is an AI-powered cyber-physical system for cleaning and maintenance of heat exchangers.
Heat exchangers are ubiquitous pieces of industrial equipment that enable the transfer of thermal energy from one medium to another. Shell and tube exchangers in particular have a number of tubes mounted inside of a shell; one fluid flows through the tube-side, while another fluid flows over the outside of those tubes (shell- side). The differential in heat between the two fluids is ‘exchanged’ to heat or cool the fluid that is being used in the process.
For example, river water flowing on the shell-side can cool off oil flowing through the tube-side of an exchanger. Fouling is the arch nemesis for heat exchangers; if fouling, debris, or scale begins to coat the tubes, the heat transfer efficiency of the unit drops dramatically. As fouling gets worse, the tubes become insulated by the fouling and eventually transfer little to no heat.
Cleaning heat exchanger tubes has historically been a manual and time-consuming process, where an operator uses a ‘lance’ or ‘rod’ to scrape tube interiors with a wire brush or hydro-blast away debris.
Operators go tube by tube, often running the lance in and out by hand. The results vary widely and often mean regular downtime for frequently repeated maintenance and cleaning cycles.
CorLance is a new, AI-powered cyber-physical system for exceptional cleaning and maintenance of heat exchangers. The AI system delivers autonomous, precise, and high quality surface cleaning and maintenance, in addition to preparation for the application of surface treatments, like HeatX.
The combination of AI and pneumatic action results in a cyber-physical system that delivers unparalleled heat exchanger surface preparation.
CorLance’s precision tubular cleaning delivers superior ISO/NACE surface prep levels, reduces downtimes, and optimizes tubular surfaces for the application of any post-preparation surface treatments. The autonomous drive system can also be used to survey tubulars, collecting qualitative data on internal surface states.
The multitude of data collected by CorLance is then processed in Oceanit’s RIVEAL AI platform to provide pinpoint intel on tubulars in an exchanger. The use of CorLance for cleaning and tubular preparation improves the quality of application and durability of advanced surface treatments, such as Oceanit’s DragX, HeatX, or HydroPel nanocomposites.
