The Solent combines the UK's largest refining and petrochemical complex with one of its busiest ports, so exchanger work here runs on turnaround programmes and on port calls at the same time. Send the unit details and a specialist will come back to you.
Submit a cleaning request
Four steps: unit, deposit, postcode, contact details.
01What is there
Heat exchanger cleaning around the Solent covers two constraints that could not be more different. Fawley is the largest and most technically complex refining and petrochemical complex in the country, and it opens its exchangers in planned turnarounds. A few miles away, vessels are alongside for a fixed number of hours and then they sail. Both are exchanger-heavy and neither can be worked to the other's timetable.
02What gets cleaned
The same region asks for a job scoped a year ahead and a job that has to be finished before the tide, and the methods that suit each are different.
An integrated refining and petrochemical complex generates a large bundle count, decontamination requirements ahead of opening, and a cleaning bay whose capacity sets the programme. Coke, asphaltene, ammonium salts and polymer are all present depending on the unit, and the scope is agreed long before mobilisation.
Central coolers, charge air coolers and lube oil coolers foul with marine growth, biofilm, oil mist and salt, and the window is the port call. Circulation on a cooler with a standby is what fits a short turnaround; anything needing the pack opened needs a longer alongside period or the unit landed ashore.
The air side collects oil mist from the turbocharger together with soot and salt, and it shows up as rising scavenge air temperature and falling engine output, not as an obvious fault. Immersion cleaning ashore is the thorough answer and it needs the cooler removed, so on a vessel with no spare it is docking work.
Tank farm heaters, coolers and utility exchangers along Southampton Water are cleaned on planned shutdowns with hydrocarbon residues and standard permit requirements, sitting between the two extremes in both urgency and method.
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. ExxonMobil has invested over £800 million in new production units at the complex, including a diesel hydrotreater and a steam methane reforming hydrogen plant, with the bulk of new diesel supply expected from early 2025.
It is one of the few UK refining sites adding capacity instead of reducing it, and a green hydrogen supply project into the complex is also in development.
Where the cooler can be isolated against a standby and the deposit will dissolve, yes, and it is routine. The vessel works cargo while the offline unit is circulated, rinsed and returned.
It stops being possible where there is no standby, where the deposit is marine growth rather than scale, or where the window is shorter than the circulation needs. Growth in particular does not dissolve on a useful timescale and has to be physically removed.
The usual answers are to land the pack for cleaning and refit it at the next call, to fit a spare if one is carried, or to plan it into a docking.
This is the main argument for carrying a spare plate pack on a critical cooling duty. A swap is a short job alongside and the fouled pack can then be cleaned, inspected and gasketed at leisure and not against a sailing time.
Months, and for a major shutdown frequently more than a year. Bundle lists, decontamination scope, bay capacity and inspection requirements are settled well in advance of mobilisation.
Adding scope once a shutdown is running compresses everything behind it. On a complex of that size the useful moment to enquire is while the scope is being written.
Yes, and it is one of the more common pieces of marine work in the area. The cooler is removed from the vessel, cleaned ashore. Immersion and often ultrasonic for the air side, lancing or circulation for the water side. Then pressure tested and refitted.
It needs the vessel alongside long enough for removal and refit, or a spare cooler to fit in the meantime. Timescale is days instead of hours, so it is usually planned, not reactive.
Not usually, and being is explicit about which you need. Refinery turnaround work needs decontamination capability, containment and jetting spreads; marine work needs people who can work aboard, to the vessel's permits, inside a sailing schedule.
The enquiry is routed on the duty rather than the location, so saying whether the unit is on a plant or on a vessel is the single most useful thing to include.
05Other areas
Unit, deposit and postcode are enough to start. Your details go to a specialist who cleans that unit type. No obligation.
