Re: Cooling water pipe network analysis

From: <JOSHUA>
Date: Sat Oct 08 2005 - 23:09:00 EDT

I agree with you Chris. The technical men operating the plant are more useful than the any software available in the market. These men knows the history of the system and they are more accustomed to the problems arising from day to day activities. In a more conservative way, I may advise this following methods which others might think cumbersome:

1. Check the scaling extent of your existing heat exchangers and pipe network. Descale if the concentration is too high.
2. Check the tubings of the heat exchangers. Retube if the need arises.
3. Check the condition of your cooling water pumps

      for the required flow rate. Check the impellers
      and other parameters if the flow rate does not
      meet the requirement.
   4. Fine-tune the heat transfer of every heat
      exchanger by installing the correct orifice at
the
      discharge flange. All you need to do is to
      fabricate stainless orifice with various
      diameters. Select the orifice that meets
      your required cooling.

If there's still a failure in your system, it's high time to investigate the network design.

This method works for our 36MW - 6x6MW diesel power plant seawater cooling system. We treated seawater with liquid chlorine (processing seawater thru Chloropac). When the Chloropac needs some refurbishments, we feed untreated seawater to the cooling system, causing build-up of algae and barnacles up to the inlet pipe of the heat exchangers. Worse is when we opened the flanges...some crabs peeps at you and started crawling like freed POW's!

Cheers to the group!

Joshua G. Rizaga
Eng'g. Manager
VWC Philippines

• Christopher Wright <chrisw@skypoint.com> wrote:

>
> On Oct 8, 2005, at 11:56 AM, Narendra Roy wrote:
>
> > We may be helpful in the analysis using the very
> > effective software Bentley PlantFLOW. We will
> solve a
> > simple network for you to demonstrate the
> capability
> > of the software and then you may decide to get
> license
> > for one seat for your technical services group or
> for
> > REAL.
> Never, ever assume that a simple demo problem run by
> a VAR is going to
> do what you want. PlantFLOW may be the greatest
> software ever written,
> but the VAR's people won't know your business or
> your plant or your
> requirements. Moreover, there's no guarantee that
> you'll get up the
> speed on the software in time to do what you need to
> have done. The
> software isn't going to do your thinking for you and
> it won't know the
> questions you need to have answered.
> I make my living with engineering software of
> various sorts, and I'm
> real pleased that I can, but software is a tool, not
> a solution. If you
> don't understand what you need and the physics of
> what you're faced
> with, all that eye candy is just clutter. Do a
> walkdown and find out
> the problems from the people who run the plant. Then
> do your own
> estimates based on first principles. Then buy the
> fancy software only
> if you yourself have determined it'll make you more
> productive.
> Christopher Wright P.E. |"They couldn't hit an
> elephant at
> chrisw@skypoint.com | this distance" (last words
> of Gen.
> .......................................| John
> Sedgwick, Spotsylvania
> 1864)
> <a href="http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw/">http://www.skypoint.com/~chrisw/</a>
>
>

Send instant messages to your online friends <a href="http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com">http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com</a> Received on Sat Oct 08 23:09:00 2005