Source: A Working Guide to Process Equipment

CHAPTER 17
Air Coolers
Fin-Fan Coolers

A
ir coolers are twice as expensive to purchase and install as
water coolers. The great advantage of an air cooler is that it
does not need cooling water. The difficult aspect of air cooling
arises from the flow of air across the tubes.
Most air coolers are either induced-draft or forced-draft, as shown
in Fig. 17.1, the more common arrangement being forced draft. The
air is moved by rather large fans. The tubes are surrounded with foil-
type fins, typically 1 in high. The surface area of the fins as compared
to the surface area of the tubes is typically 12 to 1. That is why we call
an air cooler an extended-surface heat exchanger.
The heat-transfer coefficient of an air cooler (Btu, per hour, per
square foot of finned area, per degree Fahrenheit) is not particularly
good. It might be 3 to 4 for cooling a viscous liquid, or 10 to 12 for
condensing a clean vapor. The low heat-transfer coefficients are offset
by the large extended surface area.

17.1 Fin Fouling

In a forced-draft air cooler, cool air is blown through the underside of
the fin tube bundle. In an induced-draft air cooler, cool air is drawn
through the underside of the fin tubes. Either way, road dust, dead
moths, catalyst fines, and greasy dirt accumulate along the lower row
of tubes. As the tubes foul, they offer more resistance to the airflow.
However, note that

• The total airflow discharged by the fan remains constant

regardless of the fin tube fouling.
• The fan discharge pressure remains constant regardless of the
fin tube fouling.
• The amperage electric load on the motor driving the fan
remains constant regardless of the fin tube fouling.

193
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194 A Working Guide to Process Equipment

Air

Air
Forced draft induced draft

FIGURE 17.1 Two types of air coolers.

Figure 17.2 explains this apparent contradiction. As the underside

of the fins becomes encrusted with dirt, an increasing amount of air is
reflected back through the screen, located below the fan. The air is
reflected back through the screen in a predictable pattern. The airflow in
the center of the screen is always going up, which is the desired direction
of flow. The airflow around the edge of the screen is always reversed,
which is the wrong direction.
As the exterior fouling on the tubes worsens, the portion of the
screen through which the air flows backward increases. As the dirt
accumulates on the underside of the tubes, the portion of the screen
through which the air is drawn upward decreases. Even though the
airflow blown through the bundle is decreasing, the total airflow
delivered by the fan is constant.
Inlet Air flow

Outlet
Shroud

Screen

FIGURE 17.2 Airflow under partially plugged bundle.

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Chapter 17: Air Coolers 195

17.2 Fan Discharge Pressure

Fan operation is indicated on a performance curve, as shown in Fig. 17.3.
The head developed by the fan is equivalent to 5 or 10 in of water. As
the fan airflow is pretty constant, the fan’s head is also constant. Another
way of stating this is to say that as a tube bundle fouls, the resistance to
airflow increases. This reduces the airflow through the bundle, but the
pressure loss of the airflow through the tube bundle does not change.
If the head developed and the flow produced by a fan are both
constant, then the power needed to run the fan must also be constant.
Why? Because the power needed to spin a fan is proportional to the
produced flow and the produced head.
To prove this to yourself, find the electric circuit breaker for a fan’s
motor. The amp (amperage) meter on the circuit breaker will have a
black needle and a red needle. The black needle indicates the actual
current, or amp load. The red needle is the amperage load that will trip
the motor as a result of overamping. Over time, as the tube bundle fouls
and airflow through the bundle is restricted, the black needle never
moves.
An induced-draft fan (see Fig. 17.1) is a different story. As the
tube bundle fouls,

• The air pressure to the fan drops.

• The air pressure from the discharge of the fan is just
atmospheric pressure. It remains constant.
• The water head (in inches) developed by the fan increases.
• The flow of air through the fan and the bundle decreases.
This is consistent with Fig. 17.3.
• The amp load on the motor spinning the fan decreases.
Flow, ft3 per minute of air

Head, inches of water

FIGURE 17.3 Fan performance curve.

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196 A Working Guide to Process Equipment

Naturally, there is no reverse airflow on an induced-draft fan.

That can occur only in a forced-draft fan. Reverse airflow can be
observed with a forced-draft fan, by seeing which portions of the
screen, shown in Fig. 17.2, will not allow a dollar bill to stick to
the underside of the screen.

17.3 Effect of Reduced Airflow

Loss of airflow through a finned tube air cooler bundle is a universal
problem. The effect is to reduce the exchanger’s cooling efficiency. To
restore cooling, you might wish to try the “Norm Lieberman method,”
which consists of reversing the polarity of the fan motor electric leads.
The fan will now spin backward. Depending on the nature of the
deposits, a portion of the accumulated dirt will be blown off the tubes—
but all over the unit. Personnel should observe this procedure from a
“safe” distance.
A more socially acceptable option is to water-wash the tubes.
Most of the effective washing must be underneath the tubes. Washing
from the top down is relatively ineffective. In many cases, detergent
must be added to the washwater to remove greasy dirt. (Caution: Hot
tubes may be thermally shocked by this washing and pull out of the
tube header box.)
To effectively water-wash the deposits from the fins I will proceed
as follows:

1. Shut off the fan.

2. Lock out the motor.
3. Tie off the fan blade with a rope to keep it from spinning in
the wind.
4. Remove the screen.
5. Use a 0.5-in piece of tubing as a washing wand.
6. For water, use steam condensate or boiler feed water at 50 to
100 psig.
7. Hold the wand tip 6 to 10 in from the bottom row of tubes.
8. Run the wand between each row of tubes individually.

This is a long, wet, hot, and dirty job, but the results are sometimes
quite fantastic. Washing from the top down takes even longer, uses
10 times as much water, and never does as good a job. But it’s a lot
easier and drier.
The fan blades themselves may be adjusted to obtain more airflow.
This is done by increasing the fan blade pitch. The pitch can usually be
adjusted between 12° (for low airflow) to 24° (for high airflow). Any
increase in airflow has to increase the amp load on the fan motor
driver. The motor could then trip off.

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Setting the blade pitch cannot be done with great precision, and
it’s not too critical. I once increased the blade pitch from 15º to about
22º. Airflow increased by only 5 percent measured by the increased
amperage load on the motor driver.
Cooler weather always increases the airflow produced by a fan.
This always increases the amp load on the fan’s motor driver. To
prevent the motor from tripping off, or simply to save electricity
during the winter, you might reduce the fan blade pitch.
One factor that does not reduce airflow is crushed fins at the top
of the tube bundle. Walking across a fin tube bundle will crush these
fins. It looks bad, but does not appear to affect cooling efficiency.
Take a close look at Fig. 17.2. Note that on the right side of the sketch
there is a small gap between the blade tip and the shroud. It is this
gap that accounts for the air recirculation previously described. The
bigger the gap, the greater the detrimental air recirculation. With age,
shrouds get out of round and the gap increases, but not uniformly.
The only way to seal off this gap is to use strips of plastic or Teflon
attached to the inner wall of the shroud. When the fan is turned on it
will cut through parts of the plastic strips and create its own seal.
Field results have been positive, and the strips can be purchased as a
retrofit kit from air cooler vendors.

17.4 Adjustments and Corrections to Improve Cooling

17.4.1 Adjusting Fan Speed
The revolutions per minute (rpm) (or rotational speed) of a fan can be
increased by increasing the size of the motor pulley, which is the
grooved wheel on the motor shaft. A small increase in the diameter of
this pulley will greatly increase airflow through the cooling bundle.
But according to the affinity or fan laws, doubling the diameter of a
pulley increases the driver amp load by 800 percent. That is, driver
horsepower increases to the cube (third power) of the fan’s speed.
But there is a bigger problem than motor overload when increasing
a fan’s speed. The blades themselves are rated only for a maximum
centrifugal force. This force increases with increased fan rpm. At
some maximum speed, the blades fly apart. Gentle reader, you can
imagine how I became so smart on this subject.
Belt slipping used to be a major problem on air coolers. The resulting
low rpm routinely reduced airflow. Modern air coolers have notched
belts, which are far less subject to belt slippage. Regardless, a slipping
belt will result in a reduced amp load on the fan’s motor driver.

17.4.2 Use of Water Sprays on Air Coolers

Spraying water on fin-fan air coolers is generally not a good idea. It is
really effective only in dry climates with low humidity. The evaporation

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198 A Working Guide to Process Equipment

of water by the dry air cools the surface of the fins; that is, the latent
heat of vaporization of the water robs sensible heat from the tubes.
Salts or other dissolved solids in the evaporating water will plate out
on the exterior of the tubes. With time, a serious loss in heat-transfer
efficiency results. Use of steam condensate can avoid this particular
difficulty.
Water sprays should be used only as a stopgap measure because
of the swell they cause in the plant’s effluent volume, and also their
tendency to create a safety hazard in the vicinity of the cooler.
One of my clients used fire water for a few hours to cool an air
cooler. The problem was the fire water was seawater. It proved
impossible to totally remove the salts from between the fins. The tube
bundles had to be replaced to restore efficiency.

17.4.2.1 Fin Deterioration

The fins are usually made out of aluminum. Especially in moist, steamy
environments, the fins are subject to destruction by corrosion. A
corroded fin retards rather than promotes heat transfer. It’s easy to
break such fins off by hand. A high-pressure jet of water can be used
to knock off the corroded fins and partly restore cooling capacity.

17.5 Designing for Efficiency

17.5.1 Tube-Side Construction
The mechanical construction of the tubes in an air cooler creates some
rather nasty problems. Figure 17.4 shows the exterior appearance at
either end of an air cooler. The small black circles are threaded steel
plugs. They are not connected to the ends of the tubes. Allow me to
rotate the air-cooler header box shown in Fig. 17.4 by 90°, and display
a cross-sectional view in Fig. 17.5. Note that the plugs are not

Inlet Vent

Outlet Drain

FIGURE 17.4 End view of an air-cooler header box.

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Inlet

Fins

Pass partition
baffle

Threaded plug

Tubes

Outlet

FIGURE 17.5 Cross-section of an air-cooler header box.

connected to individual tubes. Unscrewing a plug just gives one

access to the end of a tube for cleaning purposes.
Proper cleaning of an air-cooler tube requires removing two plugs.
A large industrial air cooler may have 2000 tubes or 4000 plugs. The
labor involved to remove and reinstall all these plugs is formidable.
Leaking plugs due to cross-threading is a common start-up problem.
Hence, many air coolers are simply never cleaned.
The pass partition baffle shown in Fig. 17.5 makes this cooler a two-
pass exchanger. These baffles are subject to failure due to corrosion.
More often, they break because of excessive tube-side pressure drop.
The differential pressure across a two-pass pass partition baffle equals
the tube-side P.
Once the pass partition baffle fails, the process fluid may bypass
the finned tubes, and cooling efficiency is greatly reduced. This is bad.
But worse yet, during a turnaround of the cooler, there is normally no
way to inspect the pass partition baffle. There is no easy way to visually
verify the mechanical integrity of this baffle. A few air coolers have
removable inspection ports for this purpose; most do not.

17.5.2 Parallel Air Coolers

A large process plant air cooler may have 10, 20, 30, or more
banks of air coolers, arranged in parallel. Figure 17.6 shows such an

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200 A Working Guide to Process Equipment

25 psig
Out
145°F
25 psig

100°F 95°F 150°F 140°F 155°F

A B C D E

210°F 210°F
35 psig 35 psig
In

FIGURE 17.6 Air-cooler banks in parallel.

arrangement. Let’s assume that the inlet header is oversized and has
zero pressure drop. Let’s also assume that the outlet header is oversized
and also has no P. The pressure drop across the tube side of all such
air coolers arranged in parallel is then identical.
If one of the air coolers begins to experience tube-side fouling, the
fluid flow will be reduced. But the tube-side pressure drop will
remain the same. The pressure drop across all five air-cooler bundles,
shown in Fig. 17.6, is 10 psig.
Individual flows to parallel banks of air coolers are rarely—if
ever—measured. Regardless, we can gauge the approximate relative
flow to each bundle. This can be done by checking the outlet temperature
of the bundles or banks.
Let’s assume that the cooling airflow to all five banks is the same.
Banks A and B in Fig. 17.6 have low outlet temperatures. Banks C, D,
and E have much hotter outlets. Question: Which coolers are handling
most of the heat-transfer duty? Is it A and B or C, D, and E?
The correct answer is C, D, and E. Most of the flow is passing
through C, D, and E. Very little flow is passing through A and B.
Look at the combined outlet temperature from all five coolers. It is
145°F. This indicates that most of the total flow is coming from C, D,
and E—the banks with the higher outlet temperature. Very little of
the flow is coming from A and B—the banks with the lower outlet
temperature.
Why would the flow through A and B be so low? Apparently, their
tubes must be partly plugged. Corrosion products, gums, and dust are
common plugging agents. But when such exchangers foul, their
relative tube-side P, as compared to the other exchangers, remains
constant. But their relative tube-side flow, as compared to the other
parallel exchangers, decreases.

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Chapter 17: Air Coolers 201

17.5.2.1 Air Outlet Temperature

The individual air outlet temperatures from the coolers shown in
Fig. 17.6 are

A: 105°F
B: 095°F
C: 170°F
D: 165°F
E: 180°F

These temperatures may be measured with a long-stem (24-in)

portable temperature probe. Do not touch the tip of the probe to the
fins when making a reading. Four readings per tube bundle section
are adequate to obtain a good average.
The ambient temperature was 85°F. The individual temperature
rises for each air cooler would then be

A = 105°F  85°F = 20°F

B = 95°F  85°F = 10°F
C = 170°F  85°F = 85°F
D = 165°F  85°F = 80°F
E = 180°F  85°F = 95°F
Total = 290°F

If you are now willing to make the assumption that the airflow is
the same through the five coolers, we could calculate the process side
flow through each cooler. For example, percent flow through A =
20°F/290°F = 7 percent. This calculation assumes that the percent of
flow through the cooler is proportional to the air temperature rise
through the cooler divided by the total air temperature rise through all
five coolers.
It is not all that difficult to decide whether the airflow through
identical coolers is similar. I just wave a handkerchief in the breeze at
a few spots above the cooler.

17.5.3 Air-Cooler Condensers

In many process plants, the pump alleys are covered with forced-
draft, air-cooled condensers. Dozens of coolers are arranged in
parallel. I have seen services where 300 mm Btu/h of condensation
duty was easily handled by aerial cooling. All these large systems
had one problem in common. They all tended to have higher flows
through cooling banks connected closest to the inlet and/or outlet
headers. The higher relative flows were indicated by both higher air
outlet and higher process outlet temperatures. A good example of
this is shown in Fig. 17.6.

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The mechanism that causes this often-severe flow maldistribution is

based on low-temperature dew-point corrosion, as explained below. Here
is a rather common example, assuming that the main corrodants are
chlorides, in a hydrogen sulfide–rich, condensing hydrocarbon vapor:

1. A small amount of ammonia is injected into the overhead

vapor line to control the pH of a downstream water draw.
2. Vapor-phase ammonium chloride is formed.
3. Tube bundles nearest the inlet header tend to see perhaps
1 percent more flow than the tube bundles farthest from the
inlet header.
4. Bundles seeing the lower flows have slightly lower outlet
temperatures.
5. Lower temperature favors the sublimation of ammonium
chloride vapor to a white saltlike solid.
6. This salt is very hydroscopic, meaning that it will absorb and
condense water vapor from the flowing hydrocarbon vapor
stream at unexpectedly high temperatures.
7. The resulting wet chloride salts are very corrosive, especially
to carbon steel tubes.
8. A ferric chloride corrosion product is formed.
9. This metallic chloride salt then reacts with the abundant
molecules of hydrogen sulfide to produce hydrochloric acid
and iron sulfide.
10. The hydrochloric acid may then continue to promote
corrosion.
11. The iron sulfide (or pyrophorric iron) accumulates as a
blackish-gray deposit inside the tubes.
12. This deposit further restricts vapor flow through the low-
flow tubes.
13. The reduced flow causes a lower tube outlet temperature.
14. The lower tube outlet temperature promotes higher rates of
salt sublimation from vapor to a corrosive fouling solid.

Meanwhile, the air-cooler bundles nearest the inlet header tend to

see a greater and greater percentage of the total flow as the cooler
bundles foul and plug. They tend to stay hot and clean, and those
bundles farthest from the inlet header tend to run cool and dirty.
It is a general principle of heat exchange that low flows tend
to promote fouling and fouling promotes corrosion. The corroded,
fouled heat-exchanger surface retards flow and creates a vicious
cycle. We will see this problem again in shell-and-tube heat
exchangers, as discussed in Chap. 22.

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The best way to handle the nonsymmetrical flow problem described

previously is to make the pressure drops in both the inlet and outlet
tube bundle headers very small, as compared to the bundle pressure
drop itself. Many of my clients add additional tube bundles in parallel
with existing air coolers. This helps at first, but they find that the
long-term benefits are quite disappointing because of high pressure
drop in the new header lines.
Slug washing individual tube bundles with steam condensate
also helps. Washings for 20 minutes once a week are often
sufficient.

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