Emergency Response

Refining

Working for continuous improvements in refinery cleaning.

Unplanned or extended unit shutdowns can be very costly for refinery operators. Over the past three decades, Tube Tech has helped to minimise downtime and solve some of the most difficult cleaning problems at oil and gas facilities around the world.

As part of this process, we have developed bespoke technologies that can clean and unblock heat exchangers, VCFE, and other essential equipment to the highest standards.

These innovations, combined with our professional approach to service care, help our customers to achieve significant savings in maintenance time and costs, improve energy and process efficiency and help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Our services to the refining industry include cleaning of:

  • Heat Exchangers
  • Air Cooled Condensers
  • U Tube Heat Exchangers
  • Fired Heaters
  • Radiators and Fin Fans
  • Furnaces

We also provide industrial inspection services and have partnerships with companies providing mechanical engineering, monitoring and performance, intelligent pigging, and decoking.

Just wanted to let you know that your guys did a great job for us this week, working safely and conscientiously to get the tubes clean for the IRIS inspection. Each time we tackle this job we learn something new and realised that we need to allow more time to clean them thoroughly due to the amount of build‐up. The guys cleaned thoroughly within two shifts.

Conoco Phillips

TWISTED TUBE Heat Exchanger by Koch Heat Transfer: Shell and Tubeside cleaning – Engen Refinery, South Africa We were really impressed with Tube Tech’s performance and how clean the bundles are – the cleanest we have seen them since their 2008 installation!

Senior Operations Engineer

Engen

VCFE / Texas Tower Shell and Tube Side Cleaning, France The deposits removed from the shell and tube sides were shown to contain a great deal of iron oxide and heavy hydrocarbons. The shell and tube side clean has seen a dramatic improvement in the heat transfer rate between the two vertical combined feed/effluent exchangers.

Operations Engineer

Exxon Mobil

This is exactly what we were looking for, the DP on the exchanger with the heater circuit is 20 lbs. Which would put the exchanger at around 10 lbs. We appreciate the good work you and your crew did for us and are very pleased with the results. You saved us. It was incredible when you calculate that you cleaned about 60 miles of tube.

Holly Frontier

Texas Towers 25m vertical exchanger: IRIS Standard Tube Polishing and Inspection. Including unblocking and descaling When you do IRIS testing and you do it the first time and there is no rework then there is no added cost. You have made your mark here.

Turnaround Block Coordinator

ORPC

VCFE / Texas Tower Cleaning, Dominican Republic We planned the clean of the Texas Tower carefully to minimise downtime, but we did not expect the number of tubes that were found to be constricted or blocked when the exchanger was opened. Once support services had finished modifying the scaffolding and supplies to Tube Tech’s requirements, cleaning progress was very good. Tube Tech showed great resourcefulness in adapting to the situation. Our VCFE was cleaned and inspected to production standard without overrunning the shutdown period.

Turnaround Co-ordinator

Refidomsa

I thought the work was carried out professionally and very efficiently by all parties involved. The improvements made to the process and the faults which were found before breakdown would suggest that the whole task was well worth doing.

Texaco

Based on natural gas purchase savings I estimate Tube Tech cleaning method saved an additional $200,000 over the first year compared to the normal mechanical water jet clean. I felt Tube Tech were a great company to work with, from what I observed the supervision and personnel were always focused on the task in hand – completing ahead of the proposed time in the safest manner. I look forward to working with Tube Tech again.

Process Engineer
Valero Energy Ltd
Pembroke Refinery

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Send us your enquiry below and a Tube Tech International specialist will respond within 24 hours. Regardless of your industry sector or severity of fouling, we will have a solution to deliver guaranteed results.