
thumb|Fouling on a heat exchanger in a steam [[power plant]] thumb|Condenser (steam turbine)|Condenser tube with residues of [[biofouling (cut open)]]
thumb|Fouling on a heat exchanger in a steam [[power plant]] thumb|Condenser (steam turbine)|Condenser tube with residues of [[biofouling (cut open)]]
Fouling is the accumulation of unwanted material on solid surfaces. The fouling materials can consist of either living organisms (biofouling, organic) or a non-living substance (inorganic). Fouling is usually distinguished from other surface-growth phenomena in that it occurs on a surface of a component, system, or plant performing a defined and useful function and that the fouling process impedes or interferes with this function.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).