New Technologies Drive Better Cleaning Procedures

Pre-cleaning and regular maintenance of piping, critical system components, and lube oil systems are critical to extending the life of equipment and ensuring safe operations. But every minute we spend cleaning means our plants are not operational. Fortunately, innovations in the pre-commissioning and preventive maintenance industries are helping speed cleaning processes up while improving equipment longevity.

Some of these new and improved technologies include:

Hydrolazing/Aqualizing.

High-pressure hydrolazing can be used to pre-clean the inside of steam pipes, just before steam blows, clean air-cooled condensers, and more.  This allows for a reduced amount of chemical cleaning and zero need to handle hazardous chemical waste.

Some of the benefits of high-pressure hydrolazing internal pipe cleaning services include:

• Reduces startup time
• Reduces cost
• Alternative to chemical cleaning process
• Eliminates need to handle hazardous chemical waste

Dry Silencers for Steam Blowing.

Dry silencers, which come in various sizes and configurations, help with noise reduction during the steam blow process. These silencers allow steam blowing on locations that were previously hindered by location size and available setup space. By reducing temporary piping requirements, dry silencers allow safe steam blows in these tighter worksites.

Glass/Synthetic Filters.

Modern hydraulic systems run at higher pressures and faster cycle times than ever before, making it harder to maintain fluid integrity under such demanding operating conditions. Glass or synthetic filters help address this problem by providing a better, more reliable contaminate removal method than cellulose filters.

There are several benefits to using Glass/synthetic filters. For example:

• They have more evenly spaced pores, which makes it possible to capture two to three times more contaminates than cellulose filters
• The life span of our equipment increases by four to five times that of a cellulose filter
• Synthetic filters are 99.5 percent more effective at the rated micron size, than the cellulose filters, which are only 50 percent efficient at their rated micron size

Charge Bonding Varnish Removal.

This type of varnish removal works quickly and is mainly used on gas turbines, targeting soluble precursors. ICB technology allows for faster cleaning in a less invasive manner than traditional methods.

New technologies continue to be developed, improving equipment longevity and driving better cleaning procedures.