Oil, Gas and Process Engineering
Process Design and Safety
Air Cooled Heat Exchanger Training Course
Operating and maintaining air coolers, where performance falls with ambient temperature, fouling and airflow nobody is measuring.
- Duration
- 5 days
- Contact hours
- 30
- Level
- Intermediate
- Fee from
- On enquiry
Overview
Air cooled exchangers are usually the limiting item on a hot day and are rarely instrumented well enough for anybody to know why. Performance degrades through tube side and air side fouling, fan pitch and belt condition, recirculation from poor plot layout, and louvre control that was set once. Because the duty varies with ambient, degradation hides inside normal seasonal variation until the plant has to cut rate. This week covers the thermal behaviour, the mechanical items, and the monitoring that separates fouling from weather.
Who should attend
Process and operations engineers responsible for cooling, maintenance and mechanical engineers, inspection and integrity staff, and reliability engineers investigating capacity loss.
What you will be able to do
- Explain how duty varies with ambient, airflow and fouling, and quantify each.
- Separate a fouling problem from a hot day using available data.
- Assess fan, drive and louvre condition against the airflow they should deliver.
- Plan cleaning on condition rather than on a calendar.
- Identify a design or layout limitation rather than chasing it as a fault.
How it is taught
Short input, then work, across 5 days of roughly 6 teaching hours each. Exercises run on situations delegates bring rather than on a case study written for a different organisation. Cohorts are capped so that everybody is asked something.
Available as classroom, live online, in house.
Programme outline
Day 1
How they work
- Air side and tube side, and which controls the duty
- Induced against forced draught, and what each implies
- Finned tube construction, and fin to tube bond
- Design ambient, and the days the design did not include
Day 2
Thermal performance
- Duty, approach temperature and the effect of ambient
- Airflow, and how much a degraded fan costs
- Fouling, both sides, and its thermal signature
- Normalising performance so degradation is visible
Day 3
Mechanical items
- Fans, blade pitch and the balance of a bank
- Belts, gearboxes and bearings
- Vibration and the structure it is mounted on
- Louvres, variable pitch and control that has stopped working
Day 4
Integrity and cleaning
- Tube and header inspection, and leak detection
- Corrosion under the fins
- Cleaning methods, and the damage each can do
- Plugging, retubing and the decision between them
Day 5
Operating limits
- Recirculation from plot layout and wind
- Winterisation and freeze protection
- Capacity loss that is design rather than condition
- Debottlenecking options, costed
What you leave with
- A performance assessment of one air cooler, normalised for ambient.
- A monitoring method that would show fouling against weather.
- A cleaning and mechanical inspection plan based on condition.
Dates and fees
| Dates | Location | Format | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| 23 to 27 November 2026 | Nairobi, Kenya | Classroom | US$1,500 |
| 30 November 2026 to 4 December 2026 | Kampala, Uganda | Classroom | US$1,500 |
| 7 to 11 December 2026 | Gaborone, Botswana | Classroom | R15,000 |
| 14 to 18 December 2026 | Dubai, United Arab Emirates | Classroom | US$1,500 |
Fees are per delegate and cover tuition, all programme materials and the certificate. Travel, accommodation and visas are arranged by the delegate. Registration closes two weeks before a programme starts.
Certificate
A GATI certificate recording what was attended, issued after the programme has run and attendance has been taken. Attending at least 80 per cent of the days earns a certificate of completion; attending less earns a certificate of attendance stating exactly what was attended. Every certificate carries a code that anybody can check against GATI's own record.
It records participation. and GATI does not claim one it does not hold.