The Failure That Had Nothing to Do With the Alloy Grade A heat exchanger in a refinery developed through-wall pitting within 18 months of commissioning. The tubes were specified correctly, the mill certificate confirmed the right alloy, and the installation inspection showed nothing unusual. The plant team replaced the bundle and assumed it was a manufacturing defect. It wasn't. The metallurgical testing on the failed tubes told a different story entirely. EDS analysis of the

A Metallurgist’s Guide to Heat Exchanger Failures in the Chemical & Petrochemical Industry In more than four decades of looking down a microscope at why industrial equipment fails, I have come to regard the heat exchanger as the most under-appreciated component in any process plant. It rarely makes the front page when a unit trips. It carries neither the glamour of a reactor nor the visibility of a compressor. And yet, across the 500-plus heat exchanger investigations my team