Cool customer

Ineos ChlorVinyls is a major manufacturer of industrial chlor-alkali chemicals. A global supplier of chlorine derivatives and Europe’s largest PVC manufacturer, the company’s products include familiar trademarks such as Cereclor and Norvinyl.

Located in the heart of the North West UK’s chemical industry, the company’s Runcorn site manufactures a full range of chlor-alkali chemicals including chlorine, sodium hypochlorite, caustic soda and hydrochloric acid as well as ethylene dichloride and chlorinated paraffins.

Like many manufacturing plants, Ineos ChlorVinyls’ Runcorn site needs to eject heat from the production process, and does so by means of evaporative cooling towers.

Removing the debris from the water and retaining the cooling water allowed continued operation of the cooling system

Ineos ChlorVinyls’ Eddie Sloane

When these cooling towers needed to be replaced, this had to be achieved without shutting down the entire cooling system - which would have resulted in lost production.

This meant that the towers had to be replaced one at a time while the others were kept in service. However, the pipework arrangement was such that a cooling water return flow of 50m3/h would discharge into the sump of the off-line tower, and this water would then be contaminated with demolition debris.

As a supplier to a wide range of industries that include automotive, pharmaceuticals and water treatment, Ineos ChlorVinyls says it is committed to high standards of safety and environmental performance.

Commissioning manager Eddie Sloane considered his options: discharge the water to drain or recover it back to the cooling system.

“The first option would overload the drains and the cost of discharging to sewer would, in any case, be large. In addition, replacing the lost water with mains water would not only be expensive but would exceed the capacity of the cooling system make-up water treatment plant.

“The second option needed a pumping and filtration system to remove the demolition debris,” says Sloane.

Sloane turned to Veolia Water Technologies for help and the company suggested its Aquamove fleet of mobile water treatment units. Aquamove provides autonomous trailer-mounted and containerised temporary mobile units using technologies such as reverse osmosis, demineralisation and filtration.

These mobile units are frequently hired for emergency situations but, more commonly, to cover for an existing water treatment plant during planned maintenance. In the case of the Ineos ChlorVinyls project, none of the standard Aquamove units were suitable, so Veolia developed a custom-designed Aquamove temporary plant.

This consisted of pumps and two stages of filtration: coarse strainers followed by bag filters, which allowed the 50m3/h of cooling water to be pumped from the off-line sump, through the filters and back to the cooling system with virtually no loss of cooling water.

Veolia says its skid-mounted plant was designed, built and delivered to site within only a few days.

The bespoke system remained there for two months until the tower replacement had been completed.

“Removing the debris from the water and retaining the cooling water and the conditioning chemicals that it contained, was not only a more environmentally friendly solution, eliminating the discharge of contaminated water, but also allowed continued operation of the cooling system at full duty,” says Sloane.

As a bonus, by comparison with disposing of the contaminated water and replacing it with mains, he says the solution saved Ineos ChlorVinyls around £30,000.