Ammonia Hose

[Tycho]

Seen as I haven't posted any videos in a while,

Here's me playing with a 15 meter hose




The supplier of this particular hose does a demonstration where he folds it in half and kinks it like a garden hose and keeps pulling till it's kinda straight again, and still no leaks, while it's not recommended, it holds up

In the years I have used this kind of hose... I know, I know I come across as a new born religious person, but when I see something that works, and I have field tested it and it actually works, and it's better than something we had before, and I am confident in the product to put my name on it when selling it to a client, until something better comes on the market, I'm selling this product

It's the same hose we use on plate freezers.

Back when, the plate freezer hoses were foldable, with a stainless steel inner and stainless steel braiding, like this:Attachment 16343

And that was the trade standard, stainless steel flexible inner core and stainless steel braiding.

Absolutely top shelf product... Costs a bit more than an identical hose made in non stainless steel, but we sold it in as "a lifetime investment" as in the stainless would last 20 years while the carbon steel would last maybe 5 years.

And we believed it, so we sold it, and the customers believed it so they bought it, and we believed it too..
We went on the ship and cut all their existing hoses in half with a grinder so we could get at the nuts with an "ugga dugga"/impact driver to quickly remove the old stuff.

Then we had to repack all the hose fittings between the aluminimum plate and hose, so those were removed by hand so as not to wreck the threads in the plate (we found out that using a "ugga dugga" would sometimes strip the threads in the aluminimum plate), then we cleaned the threads in the plate with a Thread tap, then we had a special air gun that blew backwards we'd stick in and blow all the crap in our faces instead of into the plate.
, fitted the fittings back in with, at the time Loctite 577 and activator (since for Loctite 577 to properly bond between stainless and other metals it needs activator) something we learned at the time. So for each for each nipple going back in, we had to apply 577 to the nipple, then the activator came in this tiny mosquito spray bottle and we had to *squeek squeek" two sprays on the nipple before we screwed it back into the freezing plate to ensure a proper sealing bond.

Then, at that time, the liquid hose and return hose were two different sizes, and we had two euro pallets each maybe 5 feet tall, filled with hoses hoisted down into the factory.

And on the old Kværner freezers the layout if I remember correctly was so that you could do return hoses first as they were from the top of the plate and to the top collector, and then you could do the liquid hoses as they were also from a top manifold, but outside the return hoses.
Anyways, that meant you had to work from one end to another, and then go back and do the same thing over again, and we fond that that was very detrimental to our wish to live

and the plate freezers, as all refrigeration equipment, though they are instrumental in the day to day operation of the ship, and should the freezing plant or equipment fail and the onboard technicians can not service it, the ship is going to port no question, and the onboard technicians are being to be blamed, but still, critical equipment like vertical plate freezers are pushed/placed as close to the bulkhead as possible to make space for processing equipment to a point where they are no longer serviceable in a normal way and technicians have to crawl under other equipment that may not accommodate the use of PPE in these times where ammonia is widely used.
Another digression

So we'd sit with our legs out under the plate freezers our backs towards the bulkhead, and our nose on the hoses.
One man, usually the most senior, would be on the front side handing us either a return hose or liquid hose, and when we were done with a freezer we'd be done and could come out, instead of having to go back to the beginning and do another row


Huge digression here,

But pretty much all of the Norwegian fishing fleet were sold on stainless steel hoses for the plate freezers.
Because they were tired of "grrrm having to replace a hose or two everytime they were in port" is costly and the cost of the loss of *****' grr grr

So they all went gradually over to stainless steel hoses.

What happened?

The amount of broken hoses went skyrocket, and claim orders came in from everywhere.
We'd have to give them new hoses on claim and some hours to change them, but it was killing us compared to the identical hoses, identical, but in carbon steel.

We'd claim our supplier and get free hoses, but we had to cover the hours for people to replace it.

Until some guy had the bright to take a defective hose and send it in for analysis.

So we did, and what they found was Chlorine, the ship used Chlorine to clean and sanitize the factory area, so they would spray everything in the factory with a strong Chlorine agent, let it work, then they would come back and spray everything with fresh water.

But the revisit with freshwater was'nt enough to remove all the Chlorine from under the braids on the stainless steel hoses, so the chlorine would stay there and eat away at the hose, causing pin prick leaks.

This is similar to the results we got from the laboratory:
https://www.penflex.com/chloride-chl...loy-selection/

But the pictures we got were with electron microscope, so we could see the Chlorine crystal resting on the side of the hole it had eaten in the stainless steel.

So as an FYI if you are delivering any refrigeration plants with stainless steel, make sure or inform your client that they should not use Chlorine or Cloride detergents in areas where stainless steel pipes are used.
https://inspectioneering.com/tag/chl...osion+cracking

After learning about the use of Chlorine and how it works on "stainless"

A few years later:
There was a case in my city in Norway, where the ventilation ducts in a public swimming hall fell down, during hours when there were people using the pool, luckily it landed on a support structure and nobody got hurt.
The ventilation ducts were hanging from the ceiling using something we in Norway call "patent reel"
This kind of thing:
Screenshot_275.jpg

My initial thought was that they had gone out and gotten "Stainless steel", because stainless steel is the best right?

There was a news article about it, and I commented on it saying that the contractor had used the wrong grade of "stainless" and the corrosive high humidity and chlorine rich environment had eaten through the supports they used, and I suggested other materials, then there was a supplier of this stuff that commented and said Tycho is right, the material they probably used is not for use in this environment, but instead of what Tycho is suggesting they should have used HCR steel that is more stress corrosion resistant than stainless steel.


Then there was a new article two days later where the newspaper had brought in a material specialist in metallurgy that explained that A3 and A4 stainless, while stainless aren't super metals and they are susceptible to corrosion in certain environments.
They had contacted the subcontractors that delivered the metal bands to the contractor and found the quality that they had sold to the contractor, and they had spoken to the contractor.
When it was published I was like "Hah! told you!

but then I started thinking... if I'd kept my mouth shut in the comment field, The guy that corrected me may never have posted to correct me.

And so this whole episode might have turned into a blame game and endless government investigation.
Another Digression

If you made it to here, reply with "556 I read it all before replying"