Filter for river water treatment
River water treatment at a large chemical company
The customer operates a closed cooling circuit in his operating section and has various problems with short service lives of pumps, mechanical seals and contamination of the plate heat exchangers. As the maintenance effort for the operation is very high, the customer is looking for solutions to shorten the maintenance intervals considerably.
Sand and similar abrasive particles in the inlet medium of the pumps lead to high and short-term wear on the mechanical seals and shafts. The wear and tear leads to leakage and loss of performance of the pumps.
Sand and silting up lead to blocking of the heat exchanger plates. This reduces the efficiency of the heat exchanger.
A test procedure with a competitive product and slotted screens led to the following results:
Disadvantages of the competitor's product were found in flood situations. The relatively higher solids content led to higher loads on the filter surface and short service life. The woven screens used by GEFA Filtertechnik proved to be more resilient. The significantly smaller net filter area of the slotted screen was a disadvantage here and also led to filter cake breakthroughs.
Comparison of slotted and woven screen:
The gap height (w) indicates the filtration fineness of the tissue sieve (e.g. 50 mic.). The gap length (>>w) is many times larger.
Compared to fabric filters with the same ball passage of the free openings, slotted screens have a poorer separation efficiency of solids, since they rarely have the spherical shape and elongated particles are retained in a mesh rather than in a slot. The separation efficiency of slotted sieves of solids that are smaller than the slot is very low.
Benefit:
- Reduction of solids in the selected separation size
- Significant improvement of the river water quality in the filtrate
- Reduction of maintenance effort on downstream plant components such as plate heat exchangers, mechanical seals, etc.
- Extension of service life of downstream plant components
Advantages:
- Fully automatic function
- Screen adjustments are possible to further improve the filtration result
- Large filter surfaces
- Punctiform axial cleaning of the filter medium through patented suction nozzles
You can find more product information here!
