Industry: Power Co-generation; Chemicals
Application: Gas purification prior to input to a stationary turbine
Problem statement
A chemical manufacturer’s engineers were facing severe problems with electricity co-generation in one of their salt production plants in Mexico. A combination of environmental pollution, natural weather patterns and emissions within their own plant were causing corrosion on the 2 Rolls-Royce Trent stationary power generation turbines. Cydsa wanted to avoid turbine repair caused by airborne pollutants and “acid rain” derivatives because repairs would have to be accomplished by removing the large turbine and shipping it to a refurbishment site. The need for many days of plant downtime severely curtailed plant operations and their ability to deliver power back to the Mexican grid.
Nederman MikroPul solution
The MikroPul engineering team has established thought leadership over many years, not only in particulate filtration, but also gaseous contaminant removal. The end user and our engineers reviewed the case together. They determined that an integrated mix of wet scrubbing, particle filtration and air chilling would not only clean the air of gaseous pollutants but also provide dense air that increased the power generation efficiency of the two turbines in the plant.
Nederman MikroPul provided design, applications consultancy, project management and engineering while relying on trusted partners for fabrication and site erection, plus Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis (CFD) and commissioning.
One of the key outcomes of the project has been the production of the two largest FRP wet scrubbers we have ever designed, each at 33 ft.dia and 58 ft. Tall (10 x 17.7 m) that were transported in one piece by river barge to the site.
Basic statistics: 2 systems, each of total inlet flow of 385,000 ACFM (654,000 m3/h)
The current status: Both systems fully operational with significant improvement in service cycle of the turbines.