CEAC-2021-04-April

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News Automatic Self-Cleaning Scraper Strainers Filter Largest Debris to Smallest Particles By Del Williams To enable its use as cooling water, industrial facilities such as power, processing and manufacturing plants prefilter raw water from rivers, lakes, gulfs and coastlines to remove organic, aquatic and other solids. The cooling water is typically used in a couple of ways. With once-through systems, water circulates through pipes, absorbing system heat before it is returned to its original source. Cooling towers can also utilize water from natural sources. These towers remove heat from machinery, heated process material/fluids, chillers and other sources. Because the cooling water originates from bodies of water, it can be dirty, with considerable debris, weeds and trash. Strainers are required to remove the waste from the cooling water before it goes into heat exchangers and cooling systems, and to prevent spray nozzles from clogging. Insufficient removal of both large solids and small particulate (i.e., debris, dirt, and other suspended solids) as well as biofouling (i.e., organic matter) from the water can cause serious problems. Plugging and fouling can cause unscheduled downtime, excessive maintenance and costly, premature replacement. Traditionally, filters are designed to handle either smaller particulate or larger debris, but not both. The challenge is that natural bodies of water such as rivers and lakes are typically rife with both. When a power plant was providing energy as a backup for a major Kansas City power provider, the plant used river water for cooling, utilizing large basket strainers. The plant, now belonging to an energy solution partner with 19 district energy networks nationwide, sought more efficient operation and maintenance from a downtown steam loop that produced chilled water. According to the provider’s website, district energy uses a centrally located facility, or facilities, to generate thermal energy — heat, hot water or chilled water — for a number of nearby buildings. These resources are transported through underground pipes to meet the needs of communities, cities, and campuses — such as colleges, hospitals, airports, and office parks. “In order for them to provide condensing water for steam production as well as cooling water to the chillers and con- POWER SYSTEMS SOLUTIONS Because power plants commonly draw cooling water from natural sources, their production often depends on reliable, efficient filtering of debris from the water to prevent excessive maintenance and downtime. • Altorfer is the only authorized Caterpillar Dealer in the greater Chicagoland area. • Altorfer has the largest number of Emergency Power Generation Technicians serving Southeastern Iowa, Northwestern Missouri, Northern Illinois and Northwestern Indiana. • Masonry Restoration • Tuckpointing • Building Cleaning & Sealer • Exterior Wall Coating • Façade Concrete Repairs • Caulking & Sealant Repairs Masonry/Façade Specialist (773) 722-2800 • Parking Structure/Concrete Restoration • Plaza Restoration • Structural Repairs • Deck Coating Systems • Epoxy & Grout Injection Concrete Specialists (773)638-5206 2658 w Van Buren Street • Chicago, IL 60612 www.westernspecialtycontractors.com • Family Owned since 1915 • Union Affiliated • 28 Locations Nationwide • Altorfer dispatches technicians from 5 locations - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. • Altorfer Technicians are factory-trained and qualified to service all major brands of equipment. • Altorfer offers custom preventative maintenance agreements for Engines, Generators, ATS, Switchgear, UPS, and Battery systems including Resistive and Reactive Load Bank Testing. • Altorfer Power Rental has a fleet of more than 125 generators and is part of the largest rental network in the country. SAME DAY EMERGENCY SERVICE CALL 877-891-4181 18 | Chief Engineer
densers, they take water from the Missouri River and put it through a once-through cooling system,” says Keith Williams, PE, who was involved with the project, and is a manufacturer’s rep at Lenexa, Kansas-based Associated Equipment Sales, which represents North American manufacturers of heating, cooling, and hydronic equipment. According to Williams, the river’s fast flow along with high tide complicated the straining of river water for the plant. “The Missouri River is the fastest river in North America, so high tide is when it is ripping everything off its banks: grass, weeds, twigs, and debris. All of that has to be filtered to keep from clogging the condenser tubes in the heat exchangers. We needed fine straining, but still had to pass very large debris, so, the [basket] strainers had to be cleaned out manually,” says Williams. Williams points out that the power plant’s previous basket strainers required excessive maintenance. “They had to clean the manual strainers every shift, three times a day during high tide, and it was a very dirty, disgusting job that no one wanted to do,” he says. While backwash strainers are often used in these circumstances, backwashing is not ideal for removing large solids from the perforated screen elements. The problem is that the backwash arm must be quite close to the screen to function Unlike backwash systems, automatic, self-cleaning scraper strainers like Acme’s can filter the smallest particles to the largest debris, and resist clogging and fouling from micron-sized particles, oversized solids, and high solids concentration. properly, and that prevents the passing of larger particles. “Most automatic strainers have a sweeping arm that uses differential pressure to suck the debris off the filter,” says Williams. “In order for it to have enough power [to do this], the gap has to be very tight to the filter, so you cannot pass large particles. The particle size is typically limited to about a half inch or three quarters of an inch.” When solids are bigger than the gap between the screen and the backwash arm, the solids remain in the vessel and have to be removed manually. In addition, biological film can adhere to the screen and create a cake that the backwash arm cannot remove. So, frequent cleaning is usually required by maintenance crews. In this case, a basket strainer was used, but was continuously clogged during the river’s high tide. “Maintenance crews would clean one strainer and close it; open the other and clean it, etc. It was a never-ending process during high tide to keep the strainers clean, and keep the downtown chilled water loop functional,” he says. Williams was originally contacted as part of a plan to install new cooling towers. He instead advised that for this application, a more cost-effective solution was to install more efficient strainers. (Continued on pg. 20) Volume 86 · Number 4 | 19
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