As the importance of safety and production in the industrial cleaning industry is recognized, the need for automated tooling for cleaning is in high demand. And why not, as its presence already floods our everyday lives? Your Keurig automatically brews exactly 8 ounces of coffee, and your Nest thermostat automatically lowers your house temperature as you exit your home. Pandora automatically picks your song of choice, while your Ford sedan automatically parks itself once you arrive at work. If your java and music can be automated to your liking, can your tools at work function in the same manner? The current process of cleaning tube bundles relies on the worker to clean by hand with high-pressure water. This creates an extreme environment, as the worker: 1. Is physically holding the hose containing high-pressure water in his hands, forced to remain within the blast zone to deliver this hose from one tube to another, and 2. Is faced with worker fatigue accumulated through manual labor over a 12-hour shift, resulting in an inconsistent clean.
Replacing the hands-on worker with a "hands-free" mechanized tool designed specifically for tube bundle cleaning solves these problems. Standard solutions include a hose feeding device paired with navigation tools (commonly referred to as an indexer or positioner) to help locate from tube to tube. With these systems, safety is achieved by removing the worker from high-pressure water exposure. Worker efficiency is multiplied due to a single operator controlling the multiple-lance hose feeding devices. Finally, the unavoidable physical fatigue of the worker is replaced by the regular feed of the hose feeding device, providing cleaning consistency throughout the entire bundle.
Although mechanized hands-free tooling is a solution for most water-blasting applications' safety and production, it is not conducive for all circumstances by itself. Confined-entry cleaning presents multiple obstacles, including but not limited to:
- The vertical orientation of confined- entry evaporators and the restricted enclosed work area limit the means of tool transport and safe removal of the operator from the blast zone.
- Twenty-four inch manways restrict the sizes of entry, requiring tools to fit within the confined walls and to be lightweight for transport and setup.
- Navigation of a standard indexing system that travels on X/Y axes inhibits full bundle coverage, dictated by axial lengths and the location of lance guide positioners. Consequently, the tool must be relocated several times within the evaporator, with tubes along the walls still being cleaned by hand.
- The evaporator's manway is the single viewpoint of the tube sheet where cleaning is performed. Thus, the operator's line of sight is limited to one angle, increasing the likelihood of tool navigation error.
- Unavoidable elements of steam, lighting and debris hinder the line of sight over the cleaning shift. Steam released by the high-pressure water escapes only from the manway. With more steam being created than cleared, a visual mask hovers over the mechanized tooling, resulting in minimal sight when navigating from tube to tube.
Combining the full array of modern hands-free mechanized tooling with automation provides multiple solutions to these restrictions when cleaning confined-entry evaporators. Enhanced upgrades to semi-automation and full automation can limit commands from operator to tool, eliminating the potential of operator error. A hand-held computing device, such as a touch-screen tablet, can serve as a command surface for control. Applicationspecific software can map and recall bundle patterns, emitting line-of-sight complications. Standard Bluetooth allows the operator to control the tool within the confined entry while remaining outside the manway using a wireless connection. Now the operator is removed completely from the blast zone and cables and hoses are eliminated, reducing the risk of slips, trips and falls. Therefore, instead of compromising one for the other, safety and production can both be obtained in confined-entry tube bundle cleaning, aided by automation technology.
For more information, contact Terry Gromes Jr. at tgromesjr@tery don.com or visit www.terydon.com.
