New York company relates three wastewater solutions for Texas refinery, Mid-East petrochemical facility, and Australian power plant
By Peter Demakos, P.E.
Water availability and water quality has become an important consideration for industrial facilities worldwide. Closed-loop, evaporative cooling systems optimize use of scarce water resources. In addition to providing cooling solutions for wastewater facilities, the Wet Surface Air Cooler (WSAC) can use low quality water from almost any other source as spray makeup.
Multiple Applications
Niagara Blower Co. has engineered WSACs for wastewater systems in various industrial applications, including power, primary metal, petrochemical, refinery, and food & beverage facilities. Uses include influent or effluent cooling in biological treatment, thermal pollution control, inter-stage evaporation in limited discharge systems, evaporation of flue gas desulfurization (FGD) water, and as a first stage evaporator upstream of dryers, crystallizers and other zero liquid discharge (ZLD) systems.
The use of Niagara WSACs in biological wastewater treatment has successfully proven very beneficial, as the microbes need to be kept within a narrow temperature range.
Since the WSAC is an evaporative cooling device, it has an operating approach (leaving fluid temperature) to the ambient welt bulb, not the dry bulb as with air cooled units. This allows the process outlet stream to be much cooler than the alternative system designs. This WSAC provides single-source thermal responsibility and has shown to be a viable solution to control cooling capacity – better than other types of heat exchange systems
WSAC technology combines elements of a tubular heat exchanger and cooling tower in a single structure. This is a cost-effective heat transfer technology providing lower outlet temperatures while requiring less space and operating HP.
Warm process fluids or vapors are cooled in closed-loop tube bundles. The process fluid being cooled never comes in contact with the environment. Open-loop water is sprayed and air is induced over the tube bundle exterior resulting in the cooling effect.
Due to the closed-loop tube bundle design and the wide tube spacing, low quality water (even that with suspended solids) can be reused with high levels of concentration.
