ATFI Awarded DOE Project

20 February, 2012

ATFI is excited to be currently engaged in a project on heat exchanger protection funded by a Department of Energy Grant. The effort is focused on reducing fouling in a wide range of heat exchanger applications, for both extended surface and compact types of heat exchangers, through the use of ATFI’s Cerablak® surface treatment technology. The project, initiated in Summer 2010 and running through Summer 2012, targets reduced industrial energy usage and minimizing waste energy to foster environmental sustainability. The grant is backed by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to facilitate job creation, retention, and expansion at ATFI through a commercialized product line development program.

Fouling is the process of accumulation of unwanted material on the primary heat exchange surface, leading to increased resistance to heat transfer (efficiency loss) and enabling one or more of the following accompanying processes: material corrosion, reduced fluid flow, increased fluid pressure drop, and increased process heat input requirements. While efficiency losses are undesirable and difficult to accept as process cost centers, the processes enabled through fouling are directly destructive, mandating the need for process operators and designers to address fouling directly. ATFI’s Cerablak® surface treatment technology allows significant reduction in the occurrence and rate of fouling, and is proving to be a viable mitigation route for thermal base fouling processes, thus leading to increased energy efficiency and reduced carbon emissions, reduced operating costs via minimized downtime and reduced fuel consumption, and extended component life.

A central challenge of the project is the application of Cerablak® surface treatments to the internal surfaces of the heat exchangers. Two major categories can be defined for heat exchangers: extended surface design and compact design. Extended surface heat exchangers are characterized by a relatively low specific surface area. Common examples include heated pipes, which can be found in a multitude of applications ranging from energy-producing combustion furnaces to petroleum processing pipes. Compact designs, on the other hand, possess a very high specific surface area, with the common example being an automobile engine radiator. ATFI has developed methods commensurate with the project for applying Cerablak® UTF to extended surface HEX pipe inner diameters and outer diameters, with a varying size range, length, and initial surface condition that can be treated.

ATFI is currently working with multiple Fortune 50 customers to develop this environmentally-friendly product for direct heat exchange applications, which we expect to be commercially available within the next 12 months.