Experience on operation and maintenance aspects of process heat exchangers (HXs) at Fast Breeder Test Reactor (FBTR)

Cooling water (CW) scheme of FBTR comprising service water system (SWS) and condenser cooling water system (CCWS) serve as plant heat sink. SWS provides cooling to various important coolers namely emergency nitrogen cooling HXs, biological shield cooling HXs, diesel generator (DG) coolers, air compressor coolers, sodium purification cold trap HXs, chiller condensers, steam water system auxiliary coolers, etc. CCWS provides cooling for main condenser, dump condensers, condensate cooler, turbine oil cooler and generator air coolers. The various HXs/coolers about fifty in number of SWS and CCWS are classified as process HXs. The purpose of this paper is to present the operation and maintenance experience on these HXs, highlight the problems encountered and enumerate the remedial measures adopted. As the CW side of these HXs remained more demanding by way of predominant problems and the hot medium (oil, gas, steam and DM water) did not pose any difficulty, CW side of these HXs alone is discussed in detail. 1 fig., 1 tab