A major cruise ship company was coming to the end of their dry docking and refurbishment programme when it was discovered that one of the main engine central coolers was leaking, meaning they were in need of plate heat exchanger repair.
On inspection it was discovered that the end frame plate was very badly corroded and pitted. Normal repair practice would be to cut a hole in the side of the ship, remove the frame plate from the engine room and after grit blasting decide whether to weld repair and/or machine back the plate. Time, money and inconvenience. We proposed a quicker solution. By using a Belzona product especially designed to bond to a “gingered” surface our service engineers performed the plate heat exchanger repair in two days. The corrosion was removed by angle grinders & needle guns. The plate was washed with fresh water to remove salt contamination before a final cleaning by angle grinders. The Belzona Marine metal was applied across the damaged areas with a scrubbing action to achieve good surface contact. Once the Belzona was build up to the correct thickness it was dressed back using a straight edge to achieve as near flat a surface as possible. Two coats of a fluid coating system Belzona 1341 was applied to further protect the end plate.
It was now time to address the cracked end plate. This was easily achieved by fitting two end plate gaskets to the first two plates and effectively isolating the first plate. This had the advantage of not changing the tightening dimension of the heat exchanger. The plate heat exchanger repair was allowed to fully cure for 24 hrs before the plate pack was retightened and put back into service.
