Chart’s Brazed Aluminum Heat Exchangers (also known as Plate Fin Heat Exchangers) and Cold Boxes are at the heart of cryogenic separation, liquefaction and purification processes for air gases, natural gas, hydrogen, helium and petrochemicals.
Continuous innovation and investment in our technology and capacity enables our customers to maximize their opportunities. Our principal design and manufacturing facility is in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Notable Chart firsts include the introduction of vacuum brazing, Core-in-Kettle®, mercury tolerant construction and Smart Layer®.
Plate fin heat exchangers are essential for cryogenic gas processing, including air separation, LNG liquefaction, nitrogen rejection, natural gas liquids (NGL) recovery, propane dehydrogenation, hydrogen and helium recovery and liquefaction and other low temperature natural gas and petrochemical processes.
Chart’s proprietary solution combines multiple design, material selection and fabrication features that work in tandem with guard beds to protect against attack. Since pioneering the technology in the 1980s Chart has supplied >800 mercury tolerant units with no reported field failures.
Excessive thermal gradients will weaken the unit’s integrity and can lead to external leaks developing. Typically, because these operating upsets go un-noticed, the leaks manifest without warning. With Smart Layer the leak path is contained and an emergency plant shutdown is avoided.
Chart acquired Hetsco in 2017. Formed in 1982, Hetsco is synonymous with providing highly skilled, emergency, specialty welding and construction services to the natural gas processing, petrochemical and air gas separation industries. Having completed site repairs across 44 states and more than 35 countries, Hetsco has a proud heritage of getting customer plants back on-line quickly and safely.
Chart’s primary Cold Box fabrication location is a 40-acre coastal facility in New Iberia, Louisiana, USA, providing direct access to the US inter-coastal waterway and the Gulf of Mexico. This Nitrogen Rejection Unit (NRU) comprises dual cold boxes and processes 900 million scf/day of natural gas.
Chart’s patented Core-in-Kettle®, introduced in 1989, further extends the use of plate fin heat exchanger technology in a range of petrochemical and natural gas processes as an alternative to traditional shell and tube kettle reboilers. Instead of a tube bundle, the external vessel houses one or more plate fin heat exchangers and provides around 10 times more heat transfer surface area and up to 20 times more ‘UA’ than the equivalent tube and shell unit. The superior heat transfer performance can be utilized to produce a significantly more compact unit for new installations, or considerably more performance can be provided to existing installations by replacing the tube bundle with a BAHX retro-fitted into the same shell.
Chart acquisitions Cryo Technologies and Fronti Fabrications have been working together for more than 30 years utilizing their deep cryogenic expertise to create solutions for purifying and liquefying hydrogen and helium. Together with our brazed aluminum heat exchangers, cold boxes and cryogenic storage tanks, Chart has the unique advantage of being able to fully design engineer, build and assemble complete plants in house.
Chart and FLSmidth, a leading cement engineering company, are collaborating to optimize and commercialize Chart's Cryogenic Carbon Capture technology in the cement industry.
Widely recognized as a difficult to abate source of carbon dioxide, together we are enabling the cement industry to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Cryogenic technology is used to liquefy gases for their safe, efficient and economic transport. Liquid gases are used in hundreds of applications across industry, science, leisure, food and beverage, medical, energy, aerospace and more. This video is designed to help you understand the key concepts that make it possible.
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