New pipes by CENTRAVIS help chemical plants save up to $500 thou.

Deep understanding of the problems of application of the materials and tubes is a crucial step in developing feasible solutions aimed at decreasing life cycle costs and improving performance of the end user’s equipment. It is also beneficial for CENTRAVIS, as the demand from the market pushes the company to continuously improve its technology and production processes.

One of the examples of such activity is recent cooperation with a chemicals producer (customer). It is well known that production of caustic soda is related to highly aggressive media, and heat exchanger tubes used in the process must be able to withstand pitting, inter-crystalline corrosion and stress corrosion cracking in high temperature conditions. For many companies this remains a challenge, as premature corrosion leads to increased maintenance costs. For instance, operational tests of the austenitic 321 grade tubes used by producer (customer) have shown that the material was subject to significant localized corrosion with depths over 0.8 mm, leading to malfunctioning of the heat exchangers.

In order to improve performance of the existing heat exchanger tubes CENTRAVIS has developed a novel technology of double quenching of the material (02Х22Н5АМ3, a Russian analogue to duplex 1.4462/UNS S31803), and in 2014 initiated five-months long corrosion testing, which has proven that the material has superior performance against all types of corrosion, as well as excellent mechanical properties.

Heat exchanger tubes of this duplex steel manufactured by CENTRAVIS would allow producer (customer) to decrease both direct (regular replacement of the tubes) and indirect (repairs and idle times affecting productivity) costs due to significantly higher (2.8 to 2.9 times) corrosion resistance of the material. As a result, operational life of the heat exchanging equipment would increase threefold, leading to the estimated economic benefit of over $500k.

“Technological solutions that we offer make it possible for chemical industry companies increase their equipment’s lifecycle, cut production costs and achieve better performance,” said Viacheslav Erkes, CENTRAVIS Sales Director.