We saw in other articles origin and effects of ACC fouling and when to clean them.
Now, let me give you some recommendations about good practices to clean, and how not to clean te prevent damage of fin tubes.
ACC cleaning: How to clean properly?
Some precautions to take in cleaning:
- The first advice is to clean At counter flow, from the outside to the inside, to move the fouling back to where it comes from. Most fouling is on the inside bundle surface. By cleaning from the outside the fouling is directly washed away in the direction it came from.
- It’s also very important To spray in front of the fins without any angle, to not fold the fins
- And the last advice is To stop the fans before cleaning to stop the air flow.
ACC cleaning : Don’t follow bad practice
Some bad practice have to be avoid to prevent damages on fin tubes of the ACC:
Cleaning is not adviced to be done by hand, with a “karcher”.
The high pressure water beams with a pressure of about 90 bar can damage the fins, therefor the spray angle must be fixed, which is impossible to be done by hand.
We don’t recommand sand blasting because it can damage the fins, in removing the aluminium coating.
Neither do we recommand using sodium bi-carbonate blasting to clean, because of the risk of a chemical reaction. Indeed, Aluminium of the fins and sodium bi-carbonate can react together causing an electrolysis and thus damaging your ACC.
