Artificial-intelligence-model to optimize biocide dosing in seawater-cooled industrial process applications considering environmental, technical, energetic, and economic aspects.

This research introduces an Artificial Intelligence (AI) based model designed to concurrently optimize energy supply management, biocide dosing, and maintenance scheduling for heat exchangers. This optimization considers energetic, technical, economic, and environmental considerations. The impact of biofilm on heat exchangers is assessed, revealing a 41% reduction in thermal efficiency and a 113% increase in flow frictional resistance of the fluid compared to the initial state. Consequently, the pump's power consumption, required to maintain hydraulic conditions, rises by 9%. The newly developed AI model detects the point at which the heat exchanger's performance begins to decline due to accumulating dirt, marking day 44 of experimentation as the threshold to commence the antifouling biocide dosing. Leveraging this AI model to monitor heat exchanger efficiency represents an innovative approach to optimizing antifouling biocide dosing and reduce the environmental impact stemming from industrial plants.

Predicting tubular heat exchanger efficiency reduction caused by marine biofilm adhesion using CFD simulations.

A novel efficiency reduction model to tubular heat exchanger based on heat transfer losses by biofilm adhesion is proposed, which included a modified equation based on the real data-dependent time, seawater, hydrodynamics and heat transfer resistance using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The biofilm growth model based on Verhulst model and experimental data has been obtained and simulated in a CFD software tool to analyze the tubular heat exchanger performance prediction cooled by seawater. The biofilm CFD model with appropriate fit, and the correlation coefficient (R2) values are between 0.97 and 0.99, was validated by experimental data obtained at different flow velocity. The final results of in/outlet difference temperatures were from 3.9 °C to 2.2 °C for different flow velocity with R2 > 0.97. The simulation results demonstrate that the novel CFD model is capable of predicting the efficiency losses during the development period of biofilm growth in in open-loop cooling seawater systems.

CUSUM chart method for continuous monitoring of antifouling treatment of tubular heat exchangers in open-loop cooling seawater systems.

A CUSUM chart method is presented as an alternative tool for continuous monitoring of an electromagnetic field-based (EMF) antifouling (AF) treatment of a heat exchanger cooled by seawater. During an initial experimental phase, biofilm growth was allowed in a heat exchanger formed of four tubes until sufficient growth had been established. In two of the tubes, continuous EMF treatment was then applied. The heat transfer resistance and heat duty (heat transfer per unit time) results showed that biofilm adhesion was reduced by the EMF treatment. EMF treatments resulted in a 35% improvement in the heat transfer resistance values. The proposed CUSUM chart method showed that the EMF treatment increased the useful life of the heat exchanger by ∼20 days. Thus, CUSUM charts proved to be an efficient tool for continuous monitoring of an AF treatment using data collected online and can also be used to reduce operation and maintenance costs.