Valero Paulsboro Results

One of our Enclosed Mobile Bundle Cleaners performed a test cleaning at Valero's Paulsboro NJ 10/12/2006, cleaning crude preheat bundles with their version of Light Cycle Oil as the cleaning solution base stock. 

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These Crude Preheat Bundles were heavily fouled with a combination of heavy hydrocarbons (as expected) and iron sulfide (in amounts theat were not anticipated).  Valero Paulsboro supplied us with their LCO ( ) as their choice for the cleaning solvent.  While this successfully removes heavy hydrocarbons, it will not be effective on the iron sulfides and other similarly bonded foulings. Therefore, the cleaning results were not 100% effective.

Lesson Learned

We do have additives that can be used in an LCO carrier that would have removed the iron sulfide deposits.  And we have a waterbased cleaner (that could have been used as a second step to the intial LCO cleaning) that we know ALWAYS removes iron sulfide fouling. 

We learned that the Boy Scout Motto: "Be Prepared" applies to heat exchanger bundle cleaning, too.