METHOD FOR QUANTITATIVE ESTIMATION OF FOULING OF THE SPACERS PLATES IN A STEAM GENERATOR
First Claim
1. A method for evaluating the fouling of passages of a spacer plate of a heat exchanger with tubes, said passages being made along the tubes for crossing the spacer plate by a fluid, wherein, for at least one passage:
- at least one measurement of a parameter depending on the fouling or on the presence of magnetite is conducted in the vicinity of the passage by means of an eddy current probe,at least one fouling indicator of said passage is derived from this measurement, wherein the fouling is evaluated by comparing a set of one or several vectors of fouling indicators with a dimension of at least two, built from the thereby obtained fouling indicators, with a plurality of sets of vectors of fouling indicators contained in a database, each of said sets of vectors of indicators being associated with a quantitative fouling descriptor.
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Accused Products
Abstract
The invention relates to a method for evaluating fouling of the passages of a spacer plate (10) of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger (11), wherein said passages (12a, 12b) are provided along the tubes (11) to allow fluid to flow through the spacer plate (10), wherein, for each of a plurality of at least one passage (12a, 12b): at least one measurement of a parameter dependent on fouling or the presence of magnetite is made in the vicinity of the passage, using an eddy current probe; this measurement is used to derive at least one indicator of the fouling of said passage, characterized in that said fouling is evaluated by comparing a set of one or more fouling indicator vectors of dimension of at least two, built from the fouling indicators thus obtained with a plurality of fouling indicator vector sets contained in a database, wherein each of said indicator vector sets is associated with a quantitative descriptor of fouling.
15 Citations
15 Claims
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1. A method for evaluating the fouling of passages of a spacer plate of a heat exchanger with tubes, said passages being made along the tubes for crossing the spacer plate by a fluid, wherein, for at least one passage:
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at least one measurement of a parameter depending on the fouling or on the presence of magnetite is conducted in the vicinity of the passage by means of an eddy current probe, at least one fouling indicator of said passage is derived from this measurement, wherein the fouling is evaluated by comparing a set of one or several vectors of fouling indicators with a dimension of at least two, built from the thereby obtained fouling indicators, with a plurality of sets of vectors of fouling indicators contained in a database, each of said sets of vectors of indicators being associated with a quantitative fouling descriptor. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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Specification