Pfizer keeps cool at Cork plant
28 Jan 2008
Pharmaceuticals giant Pfizer has completed a project to improve the efficiency and control of its cooling and boiler water systems at a plant in Cork, the Republic of Ireland.
Water supplied to the boilers and towers at the plant needs to be chemically treated to ensure the efficiency and lifespan of equipment while avoiding corrosion, scale and biological growth within the internal pipework, heat exchangers and other plant.
The project — carried out by Haden Freeman Group (HFL) and water treatment company Nalco — had to ensure no overrun on the work, as this would have affected system integrity.
Nalco's 3D Trasar technology was installed on all cooling systems to monitor and control the chemical dosing and operational parameters for each system via stress management.
Cooling systems operate under stress. When this is too high, scale, corrosion and fouling result, while if too low, water and chemicals are wasted. The Nalco system manages stresses in the cooling system, continuously monitoring system parameters, detecting upset conditions and taking corrective actions.
Webmasters were used on the boiler system with the relevant information fed back to individual LED screens. However, as the plant consists of two large utility buildings with some distance between utilities, the disparate information from each 3D Trasar unit and Webmaster meant the system didn't allow for a full overview of the plants' performance.
HFL, therefore, centralised all the data sources from the 3D Trasar units and Webmasters to allow information to be collated, monitored and controlled from a central position. This, it said, provided a clearer picture of what was going on throughout the plant, and therefore better control and efficiency of resources.
HFL also developed a system to combine the 3D Trasar units and Webmaster systems. Information from both systems, which monitored the chemical and operational data, was collated in a web-enabled data collection hub. This then converted the data for the entire plant into graphical form, which could be viewed using a web browser.
The system allows retrospective data to be viewed for up to seven days. It is allied to web/Ethernet connectivity for remote monitoring of the boiler system, meaning adjustments to water treatment chemicals can be made on an ongoing basis.
Engineering company HFL deployed a team of four, led by project manager Ian Dunkley, to ensure that the timescale was met by completing the build and testing prior to installation and commissioning.
Pfizer can now monitor and control chemical dosing levels around the plant with much greater accuracy. Greater control of the boilers and cooling towers, meanwhile, means that they are working much more efficiently on a day-to-day basis, according to Nalco.
"We now have much greater control over chemical levels in the plant, which will result in significant long-term energy and cost savings." according to Eleanor O'Shea of Nalco.A German equipment company faced a major problem with corrosion at one of its installations; the end-user — a Far East-based fruit juice producer — requesting a replacement within two months. The problem was linked to the product to be pasteurised, which had a high salt content that corroded the normal food-grade 316L stainless steel.
The solution required a large tubular heat exchanger module and pumping/heating set capable of pasteurising 12,000 litres/hr of viscous fluids. 904L stainless steel had to be used for all wetted surfaces to withstand the high chloride content of the fluids. These demands were met by a heat exchanger from HRS Group. It was constructed using two separate frames, to facilitate delivery by air, and then joined on site. The unit contains 140 double-tube heat exchanger modules and 28 holding tubes with transfer pipework. The total thermal length is 1,008 metres, within a space of 4 x 2 x 6 metres.
Water supplied to the boilers and towers at the plant needs to be chemically treated to ensure the efficiency and lifespan of equipment while avoiding corrosion, scale and biological growth within the internal pipework, heat exchangers and other plant.
The project — carried out by Haden Freeman Group (HFL) and water treatment company Nalco — had to ensure no overrun on the work, as this would have affected system integrity.
Nalco's 3D Trasar technology was installed on all cooling systems to monitor and control the chemical dosing and operational parameters for each system via stress management.
Cooling systems operate under stress. When this is too high, scale, corrosion and fouling result, while if too low, water and chemicals are wasted. The Nalco system manages stresses in the cooling system, continuously monitoring system parameters, detecting upset conditions and taking corrective actions.
Webmasters were used on the boiler system with the relevant information fed back to individual LED screens. However, as the plant consists of two large utility buildings with some distance between utilities, the disparate information from each 3D Trasar unit and Webmaster meant the system didn't allow for a full overview of the plants' performance.
HFL, therefore, centralised all the data sources from the 3D Trasar units and Webmasters to allow information to be collated, monitored and controlled from a central position. This, it said, provided a clearer picture of what was going on throughout the plant, and therefore better control and efficiency of resources.
HFL also developed a system to combine the 3D Trasar units and Webmaster systems. Information from both systems, which monitored the chemical and operational data, was collated in a web-enabled data collection hub. This then converted the data for the entire plant into graphical form, which could be viewed using a web browser.
The system allows retrospective data to be viewed for up to seven days. It is allied to web/Ethernet connectivity for remote monitoring of the boiler system, meaning adjustments to water treatment chemicals can be made on an ongoing basis.
Engineering company HFL deployed a team of four, led by project manager Ian Dunkley, to ensure that the timescale was met by completing the build and testing prior to installation and commissioning.
Pfizer can now monitor and control chemical dosing levels around the plant with much greater accuracy. Greater control of the boilers and cooling towers, meanwhile, means that they are working much more efficiently on a day-to-day basis, according to Nalco.
"We now have much greater control over chemical levels in the plant, which will result in significant long-term energy and cost savings." according to Eleanor O'Shea of Nalco.A German equipment company faced a major problem with corrosion at one of its installations; the end-user — a Far East-based fruit juice producer — requesting a replacement within two months. The problem was linked to the product to be pasteurised, which had a high salt content that corroded the normal food-grade 316L stainless steel.
The solution required a large tubular heat exchanger module and pumping/heating set capable of pasteurising 12,000 litres/hr of viscous fluids. 904L stainless steel had to be used for all wetted surfaces to withstand the high chloride content of the fluids. These demands were met by a heat exchanger from HRS Group. It was constructed using two separate frames, to facilitate delivery by air, and then joined on site. The unit contains 140 double-tube heat exchanger modules and 28 holding tubes with transfer pipework. The total thermal length is 1,008 metres, within a space of 4 x 2 x 6 metres.
