Admiralty brass heat exchanger plugging failure

Utility heat exchanger lacked filters; solids deposit caused pit-through of admiralty brass tubes within one year. Argument for filters / maintenance.

It can be dirt. I had a heat exchanger at a utility, and they'd made it out of admiralty brass. We don't use admiralty brass much anymore — we mostly use thin titanium tubes. But admiralty brass, if you didn't have filters to keep the solids out of your heat exchanger tubes and you get a little film of that stuff, you just pit right through that admiralty brass in about a year. So it's important to have filters. It's important to clean things. It's important to do maintenance to prevent the corrosion problems.