Shell and tube heat exchangers are the workhorses of every oil and gas plant. They sit in crude preheat trains, amine reboilers, gas coolers, overhead condensers, and lube oil systems — and when they fail or underperform, entire units suffer. Yet most engineers working with STHEs have never been taught the full picture: from how heat actually moves, through TEMA type selection, materials and corrosion, procurement and specification, to what goes wrong in service and why.

This course fills that gap.

Across seven focused sections and approximately eight hours of instruction, you will build a systematic understanding of every aspect of STHE engineering relevant to oil and gas practice. You will start with the thermal fundamentals — the overall heat transfer coefficient, LMTD, and why counter-current flow is preferred — before moving into a component-by-component anatomy of the exchanger itself: shells, tubes, baffles, tubesheets, and floating head configurations explained clearly with real drawings.

The TEMA section is the core. You will learn to read and write the three-letter TEMA type code fluently, understand every front end, shell type, and rear end option, and know when to specify TEMA Class R, B, or C. The API 660 section explains what the petroleum standard adds beyond TEMA and how to navigate the mandatory versus supplementary requirements that engineers commonly invoke.

Materials and corrosion covers the decisions that matter most in aggressive O&G service: sour service compliance with NACE MR0175, sulphide stress cracking and hydrogen-induced cracking, chloride SCC in stainless steel, and how to select from carbon steel, duplex, super duplex, titanium, and high-alloy materials for each application. Design pressure, MDMT, ASME Section VIII, and the U-stamp are explained for engineers who need to review and challenge vendor documentation rather than just accept it.

Specification and procurement covers the full journey from process duty to purchase order: datasheet completion, what API 660 requires from vendors, how to evaluate a technical bid, and what the fabrication sequence looks like from material receipt to final pressure test.

The final two sections focus on in-service reality: how fouling develops and how to track it using plant data; flow-induced vibration and acoustic resonance as failure mechanisms; inspection methods including eddy current, IRIS, and API 510 intervals; fitness for service assessment under API 579; and four detailed case studies covering SSC tube failure in an amine reboiler, asphaltene fouling in a crude preheat train, vibration-induced fatigue in a gas cooler, and chloride SCC in a seawater cooler.

Each case study follows the same structure: plant context, what failed, how it was investigated, what the root cause was, and what engineering decision changed as a result. These are the lessons that stay with you.

Built by a practising engineer with over 15 years delivering safety-critical projects across oil, gas, and energy infrastructure. If you review datasheets, write purchase specifications, evaluate vendor bids, or troubleshoot exchangers in service, this course gives you the structured technical foundation to do it with confidence.