Intelligent Robotic Heat Exchanger Maintenance and Non-Destructive Coating Inspection

The advent of nanocomposite treatments has shown pronounced impact toward fouling reduction and asset integrity when applied to heat transfer equipment, particularly shell and tube heat exchanger configurations. One drawback to nanocomposite treatments and any additive performance layer is that the performance of treatment is directly correlated to the quality of preparation and application. This becomes a considerable drawback when dealing with complex surfaces and geometries, such as a tube sheet configuration within a shell and tube heat exchanging unit. Tube sheets consist of thousands of individual tubes making a repeatable and scalable application difficult. Often so, inspection of surfaces is not able to be completed with full fidelity, rather a sample set is inspected and inferred across the lot as a whole. The assumption in quality across an already manual intensive and non-repeatable process draws concerns toward assuring the performance of next-generation additive performance layers. This work describes the development of an intelligent robotic heat exchanger system functionalized to apply and inspect nanocomposite surface treatments. Development is segmented in a dual effort with future works planned to integrate the two systems into one fully functional process. Phase one development is aimed to develop intelligent processes allowing for a robotic system to become self-capable of determining tube location and actuating guided movements relative to a heat exchanger tube sheet configuration. Phase one efforts integrated directly into existing capabilities of treatment application with the robotic system in a fully manual state. Phase two efforts integrate intelligent inspection into the system through manipulation of raw data gathered by phase one capabilities. The intelligent inspection system processes available data to evaluate a tube application corresponding to intended treatment coverage and treatment thickness.