We have a vacuum furnace with a moly hot zone with a graphite insulation in the interior of the hot zone. The vessel is water cooled and we recently experienced a catastrophic failure at our heat exchanger that caused around 750 hundred gallons of water to dump into the vessel. We have had the devil of a time removing the water. The roughing pump and booster have worked well in removing the moisture and we finally got it pumped down enough for the diffusion pump and the heat to come on but we aren't able to pass a cold leak up test. Do any of you work with high vacuum furnaces and have you ever had to deal with gallons of water in that furnace? How did you clean it up and was the machine ever the same afterwards? Any advice or information would be appreciated.
------------------------------
Thomas Walters
A Shift Maintenance Team Lead
PG Technologies
Ellisville, MS
------------------------------