Abstract:
Heat exchangers used in the ships are mostly of water-cooled shell and tube
type, whose tube stacks are made of copper-based materials due to the
requirement of high corrosion resistance and high thermal conductivity. Even
though, the copper made heat exchanger tubes do fail on board ships because of
corrosion. More point of contention arises when it is manufactured by
companies that have limited supporting data and documentations. In this
context, the present paper investigates the corrosion behavior of copper tubes
of heat exchanger to assess the life span of the tube stack for on-board
applications. A series of experiments have been undertaken to investigate the
corrosion rates of copper tubes in sea water and river water with flow velocity
of 1.0 𝑚𝑠 1.5 𝑚� and 2.0 𝑚� for the tube side entry temperature of 20°𝐶
The same experiments have been repeated for the shell side temperatures of
20°𝐶 40°𝐶 60° and 80°𝐶 The investigations have revealed that the corrosion
in sea water is about three times higher than that of river water. The increases
in temperature and flow velocity have increased the rate of corrosion to a
significant level contributing to shorten the life span.
