Air Coolers Jord International: 7 Case Histories

http://www.jord.com.au/services-inner/oilandgas/33/

Introduction

Jord delivered its first air cooled heat exchanger to the Oil & Gas industry way back in 1977. 

Built for Shell’s Clyde Refinery in Sydney, this unit was still in service when the refinery closed its doors some 30 years later. It bears testament to the robustness of our designs.

Since then, Jord has designed, fabricated and commissioned multiple thousands of bespoke air coolers 

in most continents of the world, covering the full spectrum of applications; pressures up to 450 bar, temperatures from -60°c to 450°c, toxic, lethal & hydrogen services, and viscous, high pour point services.

Fabrication expertise has been developed for a broad range of metallurgy, including inconel 625, incoloy 825, duplex and the super-duplex grades. Some indicative references follow :

Pipeline Compressor Service, Peru

Some 800 tons of custom built Jord process plant was recently delivered to a Peruvian gas plant, located on the upper reaches of the Amazon river. Twelve air coolers were accompanied by six high pressure scrubber vessels. With the Andes mountain range prohibiting road transport from Lima, the only route was a 5,000 km barge journey up the mighty Amazon river. This image shows the air coolers en route to port, for sea-shipment to the barge embarkation point in Brazil.

Petrochemical Service, Saudi Arabia

Fabrication of these 51 air cooler bays was undertaken in Jord’s Korean alliance partner Sewon’s Gunsan workshop. Pictured below are a few of these air coolers, being prepared for shipment after Factory Acceptance Testing.  

Lng Plant, Australia

71 air cooler bays were delivered to Woodside’s LNG Train IV plant. Jord chartered three ships to transport the units direct from Korea to site on the Burrup Peninsular of north west Australia. Jord custom designed a high performance, robust fan drive bearing system to withstand the rigorous demands of this service.

Aromatic Plant Service, Thailand

This Aromatics Plant Expansion project was as complex as it gets, involving a combination of new greenfield air coolers and brownfield retrofits. There were 26 different services across 98 air cooler bundles. The DEP and NACE spec compliant units faced a combination of lethal service, toxic service, hydrogen service, vacuum service and low temperature service. One of the units was natural draft (no fan drive).

Offshore Service, Australia

Jord was sole sourced from the initial project FEED stage for this project. Close interaction with the Owner was required to overcome substantial plotspace and weight constraints on an offshore gas platform. Strength welding of Inconel 625 tube sheets with Alloy 28 tubes was required to cater to a 250 bar design pressure.

Toxic Service, Oman

The image below depicts super-duplex air coolers often used for toxic H2S services, such as these units bound for Oman. These units are shown full trial assembled in the workshop, ready for shoptesting. VSD panels are at ground level to test the fans at different drive frequencies. The units were subsequently disassembled, for shipment to Oman.

Viscous Service, Saudi Arabia

These lube oil recirculation coolers for Saudi Aramco feature cover plate headers to allow easy internal access to service turbulator inserts, often used on viscous services to increase the tubeside heat transfer coefficient. Cover plate headers are also used for dirty services, such as refinery bitumen coolers, where internal access is required to steam clean the air coolers.