What is ISO 16812-Shell-and-tube heat exchangers about?
ISO 16812 specifies requirements and gives recommendations for the mechanical design, material selection, fabrication, inspection, testing and preparation for shipment of shell-and-tube heat exchangers for the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas industries.
ISO 16812 supplements API Std 660, 9th edition (2015), the requirements of which are applicable with the exceptions specified in ISO 16812. ISO 16812 is applicable to the following types of shell-and-tube heat exchangers: heaters, condensers, coolers and reboilers.
Note: ISO 16812 is not applicable to vacuum-operated steam surface condensers and feed-water heaters.
Who is ISO 16812-Shell-and-tube heat exchangers for?
ISO 16812 on the shell-and-tube heat exchangers is useful to:
- Drilling Engineers, completions engineers, reservoir engineers and finally production engineers
- Natural gas producers
- Petroleum, petrochemical and polymer industries
- Chemical, oil and gas industries and factories
Why should you use ISO 16812-Shell-and-tube heat exchangers?
Shell-and-tube heat exchangers have the ability to transfer large amounts of heat in relatively low cost, serviceable designs. API Std 660, 9th edition (2015) specifies requirements for shell-and-tube heat exchangers, however with new developments a large section of that document has been deemed outdated.
ISO 16812 provides you with references to the appropriate documents for the various sections of API Std 660. This helps you to use the current and accepted practices for the shipment of shell-and-tube heat exchangers.
What’s changed since the last update?
BS EN ISO 16812: 2019 supersedes BS EN ISO 16812:2007, which is withdrawn. The main changes compared to the previous edition are as follows:
- Improved guidance on cyclic service and sour service
- The minimum bend for ‘U’ tubes when using stainless steel, duplex, etc., increased
- Minimum requirements added when using inlet impingement rods
- Limitations on the use of threaded connections extended to wet hydrogen sulfide services

