American Plant Maintenance (APM Steam), provider of steam systems maintenance services, highlights its heat exchanger assessment and testing service, which ensures a comprehensive examination of heat exchangers. 

By confirming operational effectiveness, assessing structural integrity through pressure testing, providing detailed reports, estimating costs for necessary actions, and evaluating potential energy savings to optimize efficiency, APM’s Heat Exchanger Assessment and Testing Service enhances energy efficiency, operational integrity and safety in facility steam systems. APM Steam helps food manufacturing facilities reduce downtime on production lines, which translates into significant production cost savings.

Regular testing and maintenance of heat exchangers are crucial to ensuring efficient operations in facilities. Heat exchangers facilitate energy transfer between different liquid or steam sources, making effective heat transfer essential. However, these vital components are highly susceptible to scale build-up from treated or untreated water, leading to issues such as energy losses, increased heating time and leaking tube bundles. Most importantly, undetected leaks in heat exchangers can lead to significant problems such as water hammer, increased failures of traps and valves, or pressure/temperature fluctuations. These issues can be prevented through a proactive approach, including regularly scheduled inspection, testing, and descaling programs.

APM Steam's Heat Exchanger Assessment and Testing Service includes documentation of heat exchangers, including tag numbers, locations, types, manufacturers, models and applications. It also encompasses identification and verification of isolation valves and ports for cleaning, pressure testing to verify the integrity of the bundle, provision of a final report with comprehensive assessment details, quotations for cleaning each heat exchanger and/or necessary repair costs, and energy savings calculations with return-on-investment data to evaluate the business case for cleaning.