Heat Exchangers in the Oil and Gas Industry

Every barrel and every cubic metre of natural gas passes through multiple heat exchangers between the wellhead and the end customer. Heat exchangers condition gas for transport, separate liquids, recover energy, cool compressors and protect downstream equipment from thermal damage.

Shell-and-tube exchangers cool compressed associated gas, heat oil for separation and condition test-separator streams. Welded plate units are increasingly used where space and weight matter, including on offshore platforms.

Gas pipelines use exchangers at compressor stations to cool gas after compression, and at processing plants for dewpoint control. Plate-fin cryogenic cores serve LNG and ethane recovery. Amine and glycol regeneration units depend on heat exchangers for solvent reboilers and lean/rich exchangers.

Refineries are heat-exchanger intensive: crude preheat trains, feed/effluent exchangers, fractionator overheads, hydrotreater feed coolers and product coolers. Material selection (stainless, duplex, titanium, Inconel) is driven by chloride content, sulphur compounds and operating temperature.

Carbon steel is acceptable for clean hydrocarbon services; 316L and duplex grades are used for higher chloride or sulphur content; titanium and nickel alloys for seawater coolers, amine units and acid-rich streams. The economic optimum depends on operating life and downtime cost.

Jiangxing supplies welded plate, plate-and-shell and shell-and-tube units for oil and gas duties. Send the process datasheet or P&ID and our engineering team will return a thermal selection, material recommendation and indicative pricing.