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The means to clean and isolate the exchanger. A brazed unit cannot be opened, so it is cleaned by circulating solution through it, and that needs isolation valves and flushing connections on the facility side from day one.

On a loop that never stops, nobody wants to drain down and cut pipe later to add them. The same goes for pressure and temperture tappings on all four ports: without them a slowly fouling exchanger cannot be told apart from a pump or control problem. Fit them at installation. Cleaning in Place covers the arrangement.

Running both usually costs less to operate. Pressure drop falls steeply as flow per unit falls, so two units sharing the load each run well below their design pressure drop, and the pump sees the benefit every hour. If one is isolated, the other carries the full flow at the pressure drop it was selected for.

A standby unit that sits full of stagnant facility water is also the one more likely to foul. Size each unit for the full duty, then decide the operating mode with the pump curve in hand.

Only if the load is the same as when the unit was specified. Rack densities tend to rise over the life of a hall, and a replacement is the one moment the exchanger can be re-rated without extra downtime.

Send the nameplate designation and the duty the loop carries today. Keeping the same frame with more plates preserves the port positions and changes only the depth of the pack, which is usually the easiest upgrade to pipe. Remember that a published maximum flow, such as 273 GPM for the B224 or 365 GPM for the B327, is a ceiling set by the ports rather than a design point.

It can. A loop running inhibited water or an inhibited glycol blend is ordinary duty for copper-brazed 316 plates. A loop running deionized water is not: deionized water leaches copper from the braze, and the result is a conductivity problem in the coolant long before it is a leak.

That case calls for a copper-free build, the SPS All-Stainless code. Name the coolant and its treatment with the enquiry, and if the fluid is a glycol blend give the concentration, because it changes both the pressure drop and the surface needed.