Spent a whole afternoon trying to fix a leaky tube sheet on a condenser

I was re-tubing an old condenser at a chemical plant outside Baton Rouge last month. Got the new tubes in, expanded them, pressure test showed a slow weep on three tubes. Took me from lunch to almost quitting time to figure out I had a bad tube sheet - pitting I missed on the initial inspection. Any of y'all run into hidden damage like that that ate up your whole day?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_patricia7d ago

Read an article in Chemical Processing last month that said roughly 30% of tube sheet failures get missed on first look because the pitting hides under old tube stubs. @riley517, sometimes you gotta pull the old tubes and clean the sheet before you can see what's really there.

riley5177d ago

idk, maybe you just weren't looking hard enough the first time. a good visual inspection should've caught that pitting before you even started re-tubing. sounds like you were rushing through the prep work to me.