Expertise

Indirect Fired Water Bath Heaters

OVERVIEW
Indirect fired water bath heaters are used successfully in hundreds of utility, processing, and upstream oil and gas industry applications. Water bath heaters are commonly used in applications where process temperatures do not exceed 170°F.

Typical uses include:

• Heating natural gas prior to pressure reduction to eliminate frost formation downstream of expansion valving.
• Preventing hydrate formation in well stream fluids.
• Heating well stream fluids prior to phase separation.
• Heating process streams to maintain fluid viscosity at a minimum to reduce HP pumping requirements.
• Heating critical feed stocks that require tightly controlled film to bulk temperature differentials.
• Heating turbine fuel gases to maintain a given dew point temperature.

HEATER COMPONENTS

The indirect fired water bath heater consists of the following components each designed to meet specific design criteria:

The heater shell is an atmospheric vessel designed in accordance with API 12 K requirements. The shell contains the process coil, firetube (combustion chamber), and heat media.

The firetube is commonly of the U-tube configuration. The tube is removable & designed to efficiently transfer heat into the surrounding heat media and to minimize flue gas friction losses.

The process coil is a pressure containing part commonly designed in accordance with API—12K or ASME Section VIII Division 1 code requirements.

The flue gas stack is designed to provide positive flue gas flow (draft) by overcoming the friction losses in the complete combustion system.

The heat media is commonly a mixture of inhibited ethylene or propylene glycol and water which is blended to a consistency to provide the proper freeze protection for a given application.

The expansion tank is designed to reduce internal corrosion within the heater shell by keeping the heater shell liquid packed & moving the wet dry interface of the expanding bath media from the heater shell into the expansion tank. The expansion tank is designed to contain 100% of the expanded bath media from a temperature of 40° to the maximum operating temperature.

Accessories: T.E.R.I. designs & manufactures heaters with a wide variety of accessories to meet customer specified mechanical & operation requirements. Including simple pneumatic controls to sophisticated remotely controlled & monitored equipment.