Background: A need to upgrade to new technology, reduce operation and maintenance costs, and conserve water led engineers and plant operating personnel of South Carolina Electric & Gas Company's McMeekin Station to do a complete replacement of the water pretreatment system.
Problem: The pretreatment system which was originally installed more than 30 years ago had been deteriorating over the years. One major difficulty was sludge blanket formation; it required almost 24 hours for the clarifier to build the sludge blanket needed for efficient clarification. To circumvent this inefficiency, plant personnel operated the clarifier and filters 24 hours a day. As a result, the clearwell that received filtered water often overflowed, wasting approximately 94,000 gallons of filtered water per day. This filtered water had to be pumped to the fly ash pond, incurring unnecessary pumping costs. To read more difficulties McMeekin Station faced click here.
Solution: The Culligan Multi-Tech system was selected based on the successful results on river water observed at two nearby industries, combined with low total evaluated costs. The pretreatment system now installed uses a clarification and filtration system that reduces turbidity to less than 0.3NTU. Filtered water from the Multi-Tech System is sent to the plant demineralizer system to produce boiler feedwater makeup of approximately 18 megohm-cm resistivity. The new Multi-Tech clarification and filtration system was installed in the spring of 1991, and has been performing satisfactorily ever since. To read more about the McMeekin Station, click here.
Problem: Water with low dissolved solids to use in the production of industrial batteriesIf a battery is filled with water containing minerals (i.e. hardness, sulfates, chlorides, etc.,), then the battery's plates will be coated with scale. This greatly reduces the service life of the battery and must be prevented. The solution was several pretreament measures and an 11-gallon per minute reverse osmosis system.
Equipment Installed:
- Pretreatment: Automatic activated carbon filter appropriately sized to remove the total organic carbon (TOC) and chlorine from the municipal water
- Pretreatment: Duplex alternating water softener to remove hardness from the municipal water
- Pretreatment: Cartridge sediment filtration to remove fine debris
- RO Treatment: 2-5.5 gallon per minute reverse osmosis systems
Problem: The customer purchased state of the art water jet cutter to manufacture custom counter tops made of granite and other stone. In order to cut these stone surfaces, the water is pressurized up to 60,000 pounds per square inch. A very fine orifice is needed to create this powerful stream of water. Any sediment, hardness or other mineral scale would damage the orifice and seals within the system. The customer uses deep well water as its water source and it contains hardness, high dissolved solids, sediment, and corrosive hydrogen sulfide gas which must be removed before use in a water jet. The solution was several pretreament measures and a 3-gallon per minute reverse osmosis system.
Equipment Installed:
- Pretreatment: Automatic water softener
- Pretreatment: Automatic filter for the removal of hydrogen sulfide gas
- Pretreatment: Sediment cartridge filtration
- RO Treatment: Reverse osmosis system with a rated production of 3 gallons per minute
Problem: 2,000 gallons per day of water containing no more than 10 mg/l in total dissolved solids. The water is used for cooling copper wire upon completion of the annealing process.
Solution: Customer had typically used portable exchange de-ionization tanks to provide this grade of water in their other manufacturing facilities. However, upon analysis of the local municipal water Culligan suggested the use of a permanent reverse osmosis system. The local municipal water measured 88 mg/l of total dissolved solids. A reverse osmosis system would consistently produce under 10 mg/l water for the process at a vastly reduced cost per gallon when compared to portable exchange de-ionization.
Equipment Installed:
- Pretreatment: Automatic activated carbon filter appropriately sized to remove the total organic carbon (TOC) and chlorine from the municipal water
- Pretreatment: Duplex alternating water softener to remove hardness from the municipal water
- Pretreatment: Cartridge sediment filtration to remove fine debris
- RO Treatment: 6,000 gallon per day (4 gallons per minute approx.) installed. This gives the customer back up production in case of surges in need and promotes longevity of the system with a daily run of no more than 8 hours a day
- Storage: 1,000 gallon storage tank
- Re-pressurization: 1 horsepower multi-stage re-pressurization system to transport water to the manufacturing equipment
Problem: The facility was experiencing problems in production as a result of the chloramines in the municipal water used costing them a substantial amount of time and money. The facility is located on the banks of the Saluda River. With this source of water readily available Culligan designed and installed a system to filter and sanitize the river water. The facility now uses this water as its source of process water saving them time and money. The solution was a Culligan Multi-Tech System.
Equipment Installed:
- Filter System: Polymer chemical feed to flocculate particulate matter from the water
- Filter System: Sequential multi-media filtration using multiple levels gravel media to remove particulate matter
- Storage: Storage tank to store filtered water and pump to various part of the facility
- UV Treatment: Ultraviolet light system to control bacteria and complete the process of creating potable water
Problem: The company used heat, generated from boilers, to lower the viscosity of oil. Lowering the viscosity helped the oil flow faster and improves the efficiency of the manufacturing process. Steam boilers require hardness free feed water. Hardness, even at minimal levels, can form an insulating scale inside of the boiler. Insulating scale leads to increased usage of boiler fuel. In addition the increase scale requires the boiler to be blown down or purged with great frequency wasting water and chemical.
Solution: Duplex Alternating-Demand Initiated Regeneration Water Softeners capable of up to 45 gallons per minute of flow.
Added value for cutomers:
- Not having the labor costs of sending their employees to "big box stores" for salt purchases
- Reduced financial transactions. The company takes 1 pallet (40 bags) a quarter instead of 4-10 bags trips to a retailer resulting in 4 smaller payment transactions as opposed to 1 with Culligan
- Time saved by placing a phone call for an order and quick convenient delivery. The Culligan truck backs in; the salt is offloaded by the customers forklift, and placed in the power house building, adjacent to the softeners, for easy dumping by the customer
- All Culligan customers using the salt delivery program receive a 25% discounts on any repair parts needed
Problem: The customer just occupied a new building with premier class A office space. After occupancy there were problems with the incoming water. The customer experienced multiple instances of sediment and other debris lodging in restroom flush valves resulting in waste of water and cost of repairs. In addition there were staining and deterioration of other fixtures in kitchens, and lavatories building wide.
Solution: The customer ordered installation of a filtration and softening system to condition all water entering the building at 55 gallons per minute of flow. In addition the customer elected to install under-sink reverse osmosis systems, in each of the building's kitchens, to serve as the building occupants' source for bottled quality drinking water. The customer removed the existing 5 gallon bottled water service after these systems were installed.
Equipment Installed:
- Filter Treatment: Culligan Automatic Depth Filter to remove particulate matter to 10 microns
- Filter Treatment: Cartridge filtrations system to remove the remaining particulate matter to .35 microns. The incoming municipal water contained a high volume of particulate matter between 10 and .5 microns
- Pretreatment: Culligan Demand Initiated Regeneration Water Softener to remove hardness and soluble iron
- RO Treatment: Culligan AC 30 Reverse Osmosis systems for each of the four kitchens in the building
