The Humber runs refining, power and chemical plant around the largest port complex in the country by tonnage, and exchanger work here is programmed against turnarounds. Send the unit details and the site, and a specialist set up for hydrocarbon service will come back to you.
Submit a cleaning request
Four steps: unit, deposit, postcode, contact details.
01What is there
Heat exchanger cleaning on the Humber is refinery and power station work in the main, on a bank that handles more tonnage than any other UK port complex. The refining picture changed sharply in 2025 and 2026 and being is precise about it, because the number of operating refineries on the south bank is not what it was two years ago.
02What gets cleaned
This is the cluster where opening the unit is itself the hazard, and where the cleaning bay queue instead of the lance sets the programme.
Coke, asphaltene and salt build through the hot end of a preheat train, costing fired duty and eventually throughput. The bundles are pulled in the shutdown window, cleaned by ultra-high pressure jetting and inspected, and the number of bundles is what drives the turnaround plan more than the deposit type does.
Ammonium chloride and bisulphide deposit where the overhead cools past their formation temperature, and the deposit is hygroscopic. It picks up water and becomes an under-deposit corrosion cell. Water washing manages it in service; the turnaround is when the damage underneath gets inspected.
Hydrogen sulphide, benzene and pyrophoric iron sulphide are dealt with before a flange is broken, by circulating or vapour-phase chemistry. It is planned early because it is on the critical path in front of every cleaning activity, and because iron sulphide ignites once it dries in air.
Condenser fouling raises backpressure, backpressure raises heat rate, and the station already trends both. On estuarine cooling water the fouling includes silt and biological load as well as scale, and blocked tubes leave the duty entirely, not merely underperforming.
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. Phillips 66's Humber Refinery is operating and has announced multi-year investment at the site, so its turnaround and maintenance cycle continues as before.
What has gone is the second refinery. Lindsey went insolvent in June 2025 and is not restarting as a refinery; Phillips 66 took storage and infrastructure assets into its own operation. Any description of two operating refineries on the south bank is out of date.
Months, and frequently more than a year for a major shutdown. Bundle lists, decontamination requirements, cleaning bay capacity and inspection scope are all settled well before mobilisation.
That makes the useful moment to enquire considerably earlier than most people assume. Once a shutdown is running, adding scope compresses everything behind it, and on a refinery every day of extension is expensive.
It is chemical treatment applied before the unit is opened, to remove hydrocarbon, bring H2S and benzene down to safe entry levels, and oxidise pyrophoric iron sulphide so it cannot ignite when air reaches it.
Not everything needs it. Clean utility service does not. Anything on sour, benzene-bearing or heavy hydrocarbon service generally does, and deciding early matters because it sits ahead of cleaning on the critical path.
Jetting water that has contacted hydrocarbon is a controlled waste and does not go to drain. Work is done in a bunded bay or under containment, and the water is collected, separated and either recycled through the spread or removed under duty of care.
Solids are handled separately and kept wet: coke, sludge and sulphide scale are skipped wet, characterised and consigned. Where the site has its own slops route, the work is planned around it.
On refinery turnarounds it is usually cleaned on site in a dedicated bay, because moving bundles off site adds transport time to a critical path that cannot absorb it.
Bay capacity is then the constraint. On a shutdown with many bundles the queue at the bay routinely determines the programme, so bundle count is the first thing worth stating in an enquiry.
Different rhythm entirely. Power station condenser cleaning is driven by cleanliness factor and planned into outages, and the case for it is arithmetic. The fuel penalty is calculable from data the station already logs.
Terminal work is heaters and coolers on tank farm duty, generally smaller units with heavy hydrocarbon residue, and it tends to be scheduled around tank turnaround rather than a plant-wide shutdown.
05Other areas
Unit, deposit and postcode are enough to start. Your details go to a specialist who cleans that unit type. No obligation.
