Since its creation, Group Peeters has been a trendsetter in the design and continuous improvement of specific cleaning machines. There is also a lot of pressure from customers to automate more industrial cleaning activities. This is to improve both safety and cleaning quality.
The Lybover Way
The internal cleaning of heat exchangers (also called “bundles”) is a delicate and important part of the overhaul work during a shutdown in (petro-)chemical and other process industries. Such a heat exchanger can have up to 1,800 pipes and a diameter of up to 1,800 mm. In order to further strengthen its market leadership position in this critical activity, Group Peeters decided to have an automated cleaner built according to its own design. For this complex robotised bundle cleaner, a partner was needed who could think along during the realisation, and adapt the concept where necessary. That is how Lybover BULK came into the picture.
Automatic cleaning gives the best result
An intelligent camera takes a razor-sharp photograph of the bundle plate, the front of the heat exchanger. This is converted into digital coordinates, which are sent to the robot. The robot then starts to clean all the pipes of the heat exchanger internally, completely independently. The cleaning is done with 5 rotating lances in parallel, under a working pressure of 1,400 bar. Pipes with a (non-removable) blockage are reported. The operator can intervene via an interactive screen or the remote control to redo or skip certain zones. He can follow the progress on his screen.
Robot has many advantages
– The operator is always at a safe distance;
– Since the robot positions itself, there is no risk of skipping pipes (with manual positioning, visibility is sometimes poor due to dirt splashing around);
– Exact registration and reporting of the 10 cleaning activities;
– Much faster and more accurate cleaning by using five lances in parallel;
– After the work, a detailed report follows with the number of pipes, cleaning time, coordinates of any blocked pipes, etc.
