Tower internals inpsection

[ChemEng84]

I work for an LNG company and we have a stripping tower containing 20 trays, we are facing a disturbance in process regarding the specs of liquid coming out of the tower and one of the possible reason is tray damage.
we can't shut down the plant and so we need to perform an inspection on all the trays in the tower to check for tray damage.

the tower is made from stainless steel with Hot insulation of 50mm thickness.

what are the possible methods for inspecting this tower?
also one of the ideas is to perform thermography on this tower to check for the temprature profile of it, but will thrmography work with the hot insulation installed?

your feed back is highly appreciated.

 

[rustbuster]

Thermography won't work for you. We use a gamma scan to to look at the density through a tower.

http://www.tracerco.com

should be able to help you out. There are others as well.

Good Luck

 

[jrmc]

hot camera is not a good choice, maybe checking the pressure betwenn the trays can help you

 

[unclesyd]

I agree with the post above as to a gamma scan would do the job but I would talk to a thermography company before fronting for a gamma scan. Our thermo group done a lot of work through some pretty good insulation.

You are going to have your own paradox, what are you going to do if something is seen.