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In September, the RFA vessel ' Fort George ' was at the final stages of a major refit at Tyne Tees Dockyard. A total of six charge air coolers from the Pielstick main engines had been cleaned by yard personnel and rejected at inspection by RFA Engineers. The coolers were then sent out to a cleaning contractor and were again rejected. Tyne Tees Dockyard then called in Hedley Engineering who undertook the job, which was now time pressed due to scheduling of engine trials. The air coolers were inspected by appointed RFA engineering staff at several stages throughout the cleaning and testing process, and all parties were extremely satisfied with the results achieved. Advocating ultrasonic cleaning techniques for many years, in 1992 Hedley Engineering created massive cost savings for the operators of the mv 'Arctic' by successfully cleaning and servicing the charge air coolers from the vessel's MAN V52/55 main engine, after several previous attempts at cleaning at various shipyards had proved inadequate. when the ship returned to service, the chief engineer reported differential pressures reduced to 'trials figures.
Hedley Engineering of South Shields recently undertook emergency ultrasonic cleaning and servicing of a charge air cooler from a Sulzer 6RTA 68 engine which was dispatched by air freight from Montreal to the Hedley works in South Shields .
The vessel had recently drydocked in Falmouth where the main engine coolers were removed for cleaning but on sailing it was found that the engines could only achieve around 50% power due to high differential pressures. Ship's technical managers, Denholm Ship Management of Glasgow, obtained a spare cooler stack and asked Hedley Engineering to turn around the dirty cooler in the shortest possible time. Multiple cleaning procedures were necessary to remove the contaminants from the finned tube matrix and it is estimated that more than 50 Kgs of deposits were removed. On completion, the air cooler was delivered back to the vessel in Montreal , again by air freight. The second fouled air cooler will also be returned to Hedley Engineering.
This is the third time in recent months that Hedley Engineering have been called in to produce optimum results. In August of last year, a car carrier undocked at Amsterdam and also suffered from power loss due to high air cooler differentials. The Hedley team was called in when the ship berthed at Tyne Car Terminal and removed the air cooler from the Mitsui B&W 7L33 MCE main engine to the Hedley works in South Shields . After working thoroughout the night, the air cooler was refitted onboard in good order. |
