Ammonia Hose

[al]

Love the posts Tycho, have worked on trawlers here but none on ammonia, found the same with stainless hoses on the 2 stage bitzers if we insulated them then they rotted, best to leave them open to air I found.

[Tycho]

Love the posts Tycho, have worked on trawlers here but none on ammonia, found the same with stainless hoses on the 2 stage bitzers if we insulated them then they rotted, best to leave them open to air I found.

Yeah, back when Jackstone plate freezers were still popular, they had the same issue on the connections.

They had a square flange with four 6mm bolts that held the part that had the hose connection to the plate.
I never understood their design because it was like they were thinking "Let's add 3 more points that can leak"

jackstone.jpg

and between those square flanges they had a foam cushion of some rubbery material that reminded me of Armaflex.

This material was designed to keep moisture out, but what it did was trap the moisture inside and it would eat away at the flanges.


Another thing they did was to wrap the hose connections with this grease coated fabric that apparently works well on hydraulics on machines that are out in the weather.

However it did not work well on platefreezer hoses that get hot and cold, hot and cold.

it made the nut on the hose corrode to the point where it was paper thin and no longer hexagonal, but round.


The worst case of "If we clean it with Chlorine it will be super clean!" I have seen, was some poor ship owner in Norway that bought a factory trawler from Iceland to Norway.

The previous owner had been so kind as to "mothball" the factory and had sprayed it down with chlorine to prevent any bacteria forming.


Everything looked nice and pristine, but when I started looking at the 10 vertical plate freezers I noticed that there was dust on them and when I reached down between the plates to wipe it off I could feel pittings in the plate surface.

So before going any further, I pressure tested one of the freezers to 10 bar and sprayed the entire thing with soapy water.

Fine foam were formed on the side of every plate., with a blower underneath, I could have had a foam party

Sad for the owner that he had to scrap all the plate freezers