Heat exchange – With cleaning means for heat exchanger
Patent
1995-12-21
1997-02-04
Leo, Leonard R.
Heat exchange
With cleaning means for heat exchanger
15 351, F28G 112, B08B 904
Patent
active
055988890
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention concerns heat exchangers, for example tubular heat exchangers forming condensers that are cleaned continuously by so-called solid members as opposed to liquid or fluid cleaning materials, in practise in the form of foam rubber balls, for example, carried in one of the flows concerned. The general principles of such arrangements were disclosed a long time ago in U.S. Pat. No. 1,795,348.
The invention is more particularly directed to the recovery device that has to be provided on the output pipe of the heat exchanger to recover the solid cleaning members there and reinject them into its input pipe.
The recovery device includes filter means in a sleeve and adapted to hold back the solid cleaning members.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
At present the filter means are usually in the form of two flat grids, implemented in various ways and, in their in service position, closing off the sleeve transversely, together forming within the sleeve a dihedron with the line of intersection perpendicular to its axis and on the downstream side. In practise each grid pivots in the middle about an axis parallel to this line of intersection to occupy one or other of two other positions, namely a cleaning position which is the opposite of their in service position and in which they can be subjected to a washing counterflow, and a neutral position which is a position between the in service position and the cleaning position and in which they are in practise out of service, being aligned with the flow.
To enable the solid cleaning members to roll over them towards gathering means for these members along their line of intersection, the grids are necessarily at a relatively small inclination to the axis of the sleeve in its in service position.
The sleeve is therefore necessarily relatively long in order to accommodate them.
The length is in practise always greater than the diameter of the sleeve, on occasion 1.5 times the latter.
Installing a recovery device equipped with grids of this kind may be difficult, and even prohibitively uneconomic, in particular in some existing installations in which there is only a short length of pipe between the outlet from the heat exchanger and the masonry structure on which the latter rests.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Given the existence of rotary member filters as described in French patent No 2 609 644 filed 16 Jan. 1987 under application number 87 00430, the present invention consists in a recovery device adapted to gather solid members circulating in a heat exchanger for cleaning the latter that has an advantageously small overall axial dimension, enabling it to be installed in a short length of pipe, whilst having a functional capacity equivalent to that of comparable existing recovery devices combined with other advantages over the latter.
This recovery device, which is of the kind including, in a sleeve adapted to be inserted into the outlet of the heat exchanger, filter means adapted to retain said solid cleaning members, is characterized in that said filter means include a rotary member crossing or closing the sleeve transversely and including an annular filter panel between its axis and its periphery and two pipes on respective sides of the rotary member, one on the downstream side in the direction of the outgoing flow and the other on the upstream side, in corresponding relationship to each other and both facing towards the filter panel of the rotary member, cooperating with rotation of the rotary member relative to the pipes and a circulation assembly adapted to generate locally a counter-current flow through the filter panel of the rotary member at the location of the pipes.
In practise the overall axial dimension of this recovery device usually requires a length of pipe not exceeding one half-diameter.
In practise, the circulation assembly employed, which is needed to drive a counter-current flow through the filter panel of the rotary member from the pipe disposed on the downstream side of the latter to the pipe disposed on the upstream
REFERENCES:
patent: 4234993 (1980-11-01), Kintner
patent: 4566533 (1986-01-01), Bochinski et al.
patent: 5137081 (1992-08-01), Klaren
E. Beaudrey & Cie
Leo Leonard R.
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