Grangemouth stopped refining in 2025, and the petrochemical plant on the same site did not. Send the unit details and the duty, and a specialist set up for olefins and polymers service will come back to you.
Submit a cleaning request
Four steps: unit, deposit, postcode, contact details.
01What is there
Heat exchanger cleaning at Grangemouth needs the current picture stated plainly, because it changed in 2025 and a great deal of published material has not caught up. The refinery ceased crude processing in the second quarter of 2025 and closed on 30 June 2025; the site now operates as a finished fuels import terminal on roughly 75 staff, down from around 475. INEOS's separate olefins and polymers business on the same complex was unaffected and continues to operate at scale.
02What gets cleaned
Cracker and polymer plant produces a deposit that either dissolves in a specific solvent or does not dissolve in anything, and which of those is true is not obvious from the process description.
Quench coolers, transfer line exchangers and the hot end of cracker service accumulate tar, heavy oligomer and coke. Where it is still soft, solvent circulation recovers duty; once it has cross-linked or coked, it comes out mechanically and the bundle has to be accessible for a lance.
Reactor coolers, condensers and interchangers on polyethylene and polypropylene duty foul with polymer forming at the surface, and the process runs inhibitor systems specifically to hold that off. Fouling that starts suddenly is often an inhibitor problem upstream and not a cleaning problem, and cleaning without finding that means doing it again.
An import and distribution terminal still runs heating and cooling on stored product, with lighter fouling than refining produced but the same requirement for isolation, permits and controlled waste handling.
Cooling water exchangers, steam condensers and utility coolers across the complex behave like any other industrial cooling duty, with scale, biofilm and silt as the deposits and in-place circulation as the normal route.
03What happens next
The enquiry goes straight to a contractor who cleans that unit type. There is no qualifying call in between.
You send the unit details, the deposit and the postcode.
The enquiry goes to a specialist set up for that unit type and that fouling.
They come back with method, timescale and price.
The clean is carried out in place or off site, and the unit is tested before it goes back.
04Questions
Yes, substantially. The refinery closed on 30 June 2025, but INEOS's olefins and polymers plant on the same complex is a separate business, was unaffected, and continues to operate. Around 1.4 million tonnes a year of capacity and roughly 1,000 people.
The Forties Pipeline System operations also continue. What ended was crude refining specifically, and the site now runs as a fuels import terminal alongside the petrochemical plant.
It removes refinery turnaround work, which was a significant part of the cluster's exchanger cleaning. Preheat trains and refinery overheads are no longer there to clean.
Petrochemical turnaround work continues, and it is a different technical job. Polymer and tar instead of coke and ammonium salts. Terminal conversion and decommissioning also generate their own cleaning and decontamination scope.
It depends entirely on whether it has cross-linked. Linear polymer and oligomer often dissolve readily in a solvent matched to that specific polymer, which is the quick and cheap outcome.
Cross-linked and popcorn polymer does not dissolve in anything practical and comes out mechanically. Which one is present is a question for a sample, never for the process description, because the same unit can carry both in different places.
On monomer service the usual answer is inhibitor. The process depends on inhibitor to stop polymerisation at hot surfaces, and where it has been depleted or the dosing has drifted, a cleaned exchanger fouls again on the same curve.
Cleaning treats the exchanger; it does not treat the reason. Where fouling rate has changed suddenly, something upstream has moved and finding it is worth more than a shorter cleaning interval.
Standard for a major hazard site: permit to work, isolation and lock-off, gas testing, confined space procedure where entry is involved, and site induction with the relevant safety passport before anyone starts.
Allow a working day for induction and permit issue on a first visit. A contractor already inducted mobilises considerably faster, which is worth saying in an enquiry if response time matters.
The Forth carries a good deal of other industry, power generation, distilling, water treatment and terminals, and those duties foul quite differently from petrochemicals.
Distilling in particular is its own technical problem, with copper chemistry in condensers and worm tubs that narrows the cleaning window considerably compared with a general industrial acid clean.
05Other areas
Unit, deposit and postcode are enough to start. Your details go to a specialist who cleans that unit type. No obligation.
