Converting Steam Coil to Hot Water

We just did exactly that.

Converted a steam HX to water X water.

We were told it "might work." We decided to clean the tube and shell side and re-use the HX. Worked like a charm. The issue was: will the water circulate fully/enough accross the tube bundle to allow much/most of the bundle to be in the flow of water?

We estimated that the capacity of the existing HX was about 140% of what was originally needed and felt even with a 20% loss of thermal transfer, we'd still have more than adequate transfer.

We were apparantly right. Despite the missing water baffles the flow is virtually the same as if originally water to water. Here's a picture of before and after we cleaned the coil

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It depends what type of steam coils you have . If they are "non freeze" steam coils they can't be converted.

Non freeze coils have a header at one end (or on the bottom) and the steam inlet and condensate outlet are connected to the same header that has a divider inside. If you lok at the end oppisite the header and see tubes that are caped off(there usually 1") and no return bends it is a non freeze steam coil.

ED