Gas Coolers offshore, detecting air short circuiting

[q3s]

I work in the offshore oil and gas business. We have a series of air coolers located on an offshore installation (part of a gas compression package). We have gone from one stage of compression to three stages of compression, and this has resulted in a series of fin fan coolers being located in close proximty to each other (real estate is at a premium offshore). We suspect that the performance of the coolers might be adversly affcted by hot air from one being drawn into the adjacent cooler. We would like to investigate further.

1. has anyone used a 'smoke generator' offshore (complicated as it is a 'Hazardous Area').
2. has anyone used a FLIR camera
3. we could use CFD.

Anyone know of any other technique(s).

 

[PaulV7427]

Not sure if this would work for you (depending on the time and resources available) but you could setup a simple test bench. Place the coolers in series as they would be during operation. Attempt to replicate the operational parameters as much as possible. Measure the incoming temperature and the resulting temperature change at the end of the series and even inbetween each cooler. From there, remove some of the coolers, alter the spacing in between them, etc. to see how the temperature changes. You can measure other pieces of information such as air speed, etc. but I would think the temperature is really the important factor for fin fan cooling units.

 

[speco]

q3s,

If the coolers are operating, a simple way to check for accidental warm air recirculation is to measure the inlet temp to the fans at various places. I'm presuming that these are forced draft (fans on the bottom) coolers.

In this scenario, the worst setup is to have a small space (say 3-5 feet) between the bays. If that's how your coolers are arranged you might consider installing some sheet metal baffles between the bays. Placing the bays right next to each other is OK, too.

This kind of problem is difficult to predict, since wind direction and the location of of coolers with respect to surrounding equipment or buildings can make a big difference.

Regards,

Speco (

http://www.stoneprocess.com)

 

[MisterE2]

I've used a flir phoenix dts, very nice cooled camera and A40m and thermoteknix miracle, but you probably won't see all that much, the things they pick up on would be water vapor, co2, but both of those would diffuse into the air pretty quickly. I'm not entirely sure what you would hope to see or test with one though, any additional info about how you're able to test? Though, it might be easier just do try and send some outside air in with an additional fan or add some fins to try and mitigate the hot air coming out of some of the earlier stage fans