The present Final Project in Mechanical Engineering was developed under a broader R&D project, funded by the Light/Aneel Research and Development Program, under the responsibility of the Postgraduate Program in Metrology of PUC-Rio. While the R&D project aims to automate the operation of a technological alternative, which uses abrasive spheres to enable the cleaning of heat exchangers used in the cooling of hydro generators, this project focused on the monitoring of the construction of the automation system and the functional laboratory tests realization to verify that the optoelectronic signals generated by spheres counters are in fact capable of managing the total of spheres introduced and recovered during each cleaning cycle. Operating in the infra-red zone, these optoelectronic devices constitute the intelligence of the system, that allows to control a set of electrovalves that regulate the ow of the cooling water in the inner tubes of the exchanger, transporting that way the abrasive spheres used to remove the incrustation deposited on the inner walls of the exchanger tubes. The system automates the activation of a new cleaning cycle whenever the total number of spheres inserted is equal to the total number of spheres recovered after their circulation through the heat exchanger. Tested and validated in a laboratorial atmosphere, the system was found able to generate the logic signals that control the automation operations, automatically generating a log of all operations performed.