Admiralty brass and Chloride water

[maintennance]

One of the Lube oil heat exchanger tubes material is Admiralty brass. We are planning to use cooling water having chloride of 350 ppm. Whether admiralty brass can be used for the above cooling water quality? Whether temperature rise in the cooling water will have any effect in the admiralty tubes?

Thanks to clarify

 

[Metalguy]

Admiralty brass does pretty well out on the CLEAN high seas where the cl- is ~20,000 ppm. Sulfides and ammonia will kill it fast, and it doesn't like a high level of chlorine, such as is used to control algae and bacteria.

The temp. of the water shouldn't matter much.

"You see, wire telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? Radio operates the same way: You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is there is no cat." A. Einstein

 

[maintennance]

Thanks Metalguy. Do you have any article related to this chloride corrosion with the admiralty brass. Thanks to share if you can or refer.

 

[Metalguy]

Admiralty is usually rated "Good", not "Very Good" or "Excellent" for use with "Hypochlorous acid", which is what you have in near-neutral pH water that has sodium hydroxide added to it.

The usual 1-3 PPM are fine, but I have seen something (cannot find now) about problems at higher levels.

"You see, wire telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? Radio operates the same way: You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is there is no cat." A. Einstein

 

[saberblue]

Go to the ASM book on copper based materials that should have the references you need -- left my copy in the company library when I retired.

 

[rmw]

Olin presented a paper on copper alloy tubing at some ASME conference several years ago, less than 10 I think if you can find it. I think it covers the topic pretty good.

Another good source of informatin is

http://www.copper.org

especially here:

http://www.copper.org/resources/properties/db/CDACorrosionSelectionServlet.jsp

rmw

 

[maintennance]

Metallguy, you mean to say that for 350 ppm of chlorine in the cooling water is a concern for the cooler which is made of admiralty brass tubes?

 

[Metalguy]

There is a HUGE difference between the chloride ion (cl-) and the chlorine in sodium hypo/hypochlorous acid.

Admiralty is nearly impervious to cl-, at least up to ~20,000 ppm. But 350 ppm of actual CHLORINE in water would make me perform some meaningful tests for suitability.

"You see, wire telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? Radio operates the same way: You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is there is no cat." A. Einstein

 

[Guest102023]

I have seen numerous failures in adm brass tubes carrying OTCW (river) in refinery. The typical practice is 'shock' chlorine treatment to detach pervasive zebra mussels.

I don't think it was the chlorine per se that caused failures, but the decomposition products of the biomass, which include ammonia compounds.

What is the temperature range?

 

[rmw]

Wow brimstoner, what country do you live in that permits shocking with Chlorine?

rmw

 

[unclesyd]

We have 10 multi ton refrigeration machines that use river water on the condensers and the majority if not all have Admiralty tubes. Our river water intake is in a tidal zone and varies from very low Cl to salt water when there is a dry spell. Even though we don't have Zebra mussels at times we do treated the system with CL2 to help with the algae.


Addenda:
We welcome a dry spell as the water will get salty enough that we can pick very large white shrimp off the traveling screens. It is nothing to getting a 48 quarter cooler full in an hour.

 

[stanweld]

We used Admiralty tubes for natural gas cooling tubes using Colorado River water with Chloride ion over 1100 ppm.

 

[SMF1964]

My house has copper piping, with a water softener that puts 250 ppm chloride into the water as it comes in (the ion exchange process removes the 250 ppm calcium/magnesium). So far, it's held up pretty well. But then, as MetalGuy said, I'm not putting sodium hypochlorite into my water - that's the job of the water authority.