Cooling Water Quality

[Dofsteel]

Good day,

We currently use surface water as a cooling medium for our turbine condensers. The water is passed through a strainer prior to being fed to the condenser. These strainers are frequently plugging, and it was suggested to increase the mesh size to reduce the frequency of pluggage. Where could I find some rules of thumb on the largest practical particle sizes for different tube diameters on heat exchangers for tubeside fluids? Any help you can offer would be much appreciated.

DS

 

[jcd3]

The best advice I can give is that you should probably avoid putting solids through the exchanger, as they could potentially lead to (and/or expediate the process of) fouling in the tubes, which would cause you to lose heat transfer. As far as what is practical for particle distributions for certain tube diameters, I'm not aware of any literature (which certainly doesn't mean some isn't out there somewhere). You're best bet here is probably to talk to the vendor of the heat exchanger, or even talk to other vendors to see if they have experience with it.

I know this advice is a little ambiguous; my apologies. Best of luck in your endeavors!

JCD

 

[kenvlach]

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but isn't it at least odd that if your screens are clogging due to solids, you should modify your system to allow these solids into the critical part of your system. Agree with JCD.

My suggestion: keep your present screens in place (at sometime, somebody had specified them). But, put some coarser screens upstream for 2-stage filtration.

 

[EMKWR]

Dofsteel,

what exactly is causing the plugging. Is it solids in the water, macro-biofouling ? Some of these problems can be solved without changing the mesh size. If you need more info on this please send me an e-mail and I'll contact you with a friend of mine who is a specialist on the subject.

Edwin Muller
KEMA Power Generation & Sustainables
Arnhem, The Netherlands
E-mail e.f.muller@kema.nl
Internet:

http://www.kema-water.nl

 

[25362]

If water quality remains low, what about putting parallel interchangeable strainers (filters) with backwash provisions ?

 

[July]

What is the source of your water? I would tend to agree with jcd, kenvlach and 25362. Backwash facilities on the condenser would also help.