Titanium Surface Condensers

A client's process duty called for surface condensers in titanium — a material chosen for its corrosion resistance in the service, but one that had never been welded into a surface condenser inside the UAE before. There was no local precedent to draw on for the welding qualification or fabrication sequencing this would require.

Dolphin Group's fabrication team qualified titanium-specific welding procedures from first principles, including the shielding and handling controls titanium welding demands to avoid contamination that would compromise the joint's integrity — a qualification step with no local prior project to reference.

“Titanium doesn't forgive a shortcut in shielding or handling the way carbon steel does — the qualification has to be right before the first production weld, not corrected after it.”

Both condensers were fabricated, inspected and tested to the design standard, with weld quality verified against the qualified procedure at every stage rather than sampled after the fact.

The two titanium welded surface condensers were delivered as the first of their kind manufactured in the UAE — and remain the only ones, a standard the project set for any future titanium-welded pressure equipment built in the country.