Control-of-fouling-in-a-spirally-ribbed-water-chilled-tube-with-electronic-anti-fouling-technology_1.pdf

Control of fouling in a spirally-ribbed water chilled tube with electronic anti-fouling technology Young I. Cho*, Rong Liu Department of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA Received 19 October 1998; received in revised form 10 December 1998 Abstract The objective of the present study was to investigate the feasibility of using electronic anti-fouling (EAF) technology to control precipitation fouling in a spirally-ribbed tube commonly used in chillers. Fouling experiments were conducted with two new tubes: one with an EAF treatment and the other without it. Brush punching of a fouled tube with an enhanced spin-grit brush cleaned almost all of the scale above the ?ns for the case with the EAF treatment, thus recovering 90% of the initial overall heat transfer coe?cient values. However, for the case without the EAF treatment, the spin-grit brush punching was not e?ective in removing scale. The present experiment indicated that the EAF technology could be used to control precipitation fouling in a spirally-ribbed tube. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction When hard water is heated (or cooled) in heat trans- fer equipment, scaling occurs. When scale deposits on a heat exchanger surface, it is traditionally called `foul- ing. The type of scale di?ers from industry to indus- try, depending on the mineral content of the available water. One of the most common forms of scale is cal- cium carbonate, CaCO3 [1], which is the subject of the present study. Once scale builds up on a heat transfer surface, at least two problems associated with scale occurs. The ?rst problem is the degradation in the performance of the heat transfer equipment. Due to the small thermal conductivity of scale, a thin coating of scale on the heat transfer surface will greatly reduce the overall heat transfer performance. The second less critical problem is that a small change in tube diameter sub- stantially decreases the ˉow