Tubular Reactors

Tubular reactors are some of the critical equipment in petrochemical plants for the production of ethylene oxide, methanol and MTBE, and in Gas-to-Liquids plants.

GE Oil & Gas has been a leading manufacturer of this equipment for 25 years.

Design Philosophy

Tubular reactors consist of large shell and tube heat exchangers with very large diameters of up to 26 ft (8 m) and more than 10,000 tubes. Each tube is welded to the tube sheets with a special welding process for high-tech materials such as duplex stainless steel or zirconium.

Key design factors for tubular reactor manufacturing are:
  • Tube sheet drilling technology with narrow tolerances
  • Tube-to-tube sheet welding operations

GE has developed automatic welding technology for tube to tube-sheet welding, and achieves extremely high quality and productivity.

Experience and Applications

GE Oil and Gas has over 25 years of experience in manufacturing sophisticated tubular reactors for the production of ethylene oxide, methanol and MTBE, as well as for Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) plants.

Product Characteristics

GE has developed automatic welding technology for tube to tube-sheet welding.

Our welding technology has very narrow tolerances in order to deliver high-quality, precision results.

It is designed for the special applications of materials such as duplex stainless steel, titanium and zirconium, which significantly increase the stability of the finished units.

Site Activities and Technical Services

Site Activities:

There can be practical constraints to shipping fully assembled reactors to some job sites. In such cases, GE's capabilities enable field assembly of reactor sections shipped from our Massa plant. With leading edge technology, manufacturing capabilities, and unparalleled field experience, our teams can provide complete field fabrication of complex hydroprocessing reactors to the same specifications and standards as units assembled at our own facilities.

Our teams have experienced extensive experience assembling and installing units in many locations worldwide, under adverse weather and environmental conditions.

Technical Services:

GE Oil & Gas offers comprehensive technical service programs for all types of static equipment designed to help deliver reduced plant operating costs and increased plant efficiency.

Extensive technical expertise, advanced diagnostics, NDT systems, and regional service teams combine to guarantee coverage of customer needs.

Our services include:
  • Installation assistance
  • Spare parts supply
  • Routine inspection, repairs, and maintenance
  • Predictive inspections
  • Predictive maintenance
  • Performance assessment, upgrading, and modifications
  • Diagnostics and NDT inspection
  • Residual life assessment and failure analysis
  • Plant shutdown planning
  • Gas turbine heat recovery

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