Heat Exchanger Plugs

Pop-A-Plug® Heat Exchanger Plugs


Curtiss-Wright EST Group offers a complete line of heat exchanger tube plugs (Pop-A-Plugs) and plugging systems designed for quickly preparing and plugging leaking and degraded Heat Exchanger, condenser and boiler tubes.

Pop-A-Plug® Tube Plugs are a mechanical solution that minimize installer fatigue and protect against damage to tubesheet ligaments and adjacent tubesheet joints (which commonly occurs with the old school repair of tapered plugs).

Tapered Heat Exchanger Plugs
Tapered Plugs are installed with an uncontrolled force and rely on distorting the tube to create a seal – often leading to further damage or plugs falling out once back in service.

Key Benefits

  • Helium leak tight seal to 1 x 10-6 cc/sec
  • Tube Plug material matches tube material preventing thermal expansion and contraction issues and/or undesirable galvanic interaction
  • Metal to metal seal will not leak or degrade like elastomer plugs
  • Accommodates Through-the-Tube Plugging™ applications
  • Lowest lifecycle cost compared to alternative tube plugging methods
  • Readily available from stock with 24/7 emergency manufacturing capability
  • Meets ASME PCC-2-2015 recommendations and EPRI criteria

Pop-A-Plugs are suitable for service in operating pressures up to 7,000 psi (480 Bar) and are designed to outlast the life of the unit.

Heat Exchanger Plugs
Heat Exchanger Tube Plugs

Applications

  • Condensers
  • Shell and Tube Heat Exchangers
  • Air Cooled Heat Exchanger
  • Lube Oil Cooler
  • Drain Coolers
  • Floating Head Heat Exchangers
  • Reboilers
  • Boilers
  • Feedwater Heaters

PipeServ can supply qualified technicians or train your personal onsite to be competent to install Pop-A-Plugs across a range of applications.

Case Histories

 LNG Plants QLD

2 new LNG plants in Queensland experience microbial (MIC) corrosion in their new propane ACHE units (<6 months into operation). Due to the Train setup, retubing the units would be a very costly exercise with a loss of production and complete plant shutdown for months.Both sites utilize Pop-A-Plugs being in their best practice. The added benefit in this scenario is that they could install the plugs, order tube liners and remove the plugs to reline the tubes in a future planned outage.

 

Pop-A-Plugs enabled the site to get back into operation in an extremely quick timeframe and then refurbish the heat exchangers giving the customer millions of cost savings from a repair and production standpoint

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Tube Testing Guns

Download Technical Information Documents

Application Histories

Air Cooled Heat Exchanger Repair – PNG 0316 PDF