Deposit thickness control of the heat exchange equipment by hardware and software complex

Abstract

The deposits formation on heat exchange surfaces is an important problem in the thermal power industry. Since the thermal conductivity coefficient of deposits has low values, even a small layer of them creates a large thermal resistance. Deposits on the heat exchange equipment surfaces reduce the heat transfer coefficient, heat transfer efficiency, and lead to significant energy losses. To restore the operation design mode, such heat exchangers must be decommissioned and contaminated surfaces must be cleaned. Energy losses can be reduced if deposits on heat exchange surfaces are detected in a timely manner. The paper discusses a method for controlling deposits thickness on heat exchange surfaces. The method is based on the damping parameters analysis of the controlled product free vibrations. The research was carried out on models of the heat exchange equipment surfaces-steel plates 400x160x2 mm, with different deposits thickness 1 During studying of the acoustic characteristics, the natural vibrations frequencies were determined tenfold with each type of plate. Signal processing occurs in a program that allows you to receive and record data from an audio device, calculate the signal amplitude spectrum in the time domain, and return it as a value and phase (receiving the frequency spectrum). The Wilcoxon rank sum was used to determine the spectrum changes dynamics. The researches have shown that the free vibrations method allows us to determine not only the presence of deposits on the heat exchange surfaces, but also their thickness.