SUEZ's OptiSea Uses New Chemical And Monitoring Offering To Eliminate Deposition And Fouling In Seawater Cooling Systems
Chemical processing plants, power plants, and refineries that use seawater for cooling face an ongoing battle against deposition and fouling in their condensers and heat exchangers, which reduces efficiency and can lead to costly downtime. SUEZ’s OptiSea uses a combination of chemical treatment and digital monitoring to prevent deposition and fouling in cooling systems that rely on seawater. OptiSea will reduce Total Cost of Operation (TCO) for customers by maximizing cycles of concentration and optimizing chemical usage, with performance assurance through real-time deposition monitoring.
“Operators have expressed a strong desire for a technology that optimizes control of deposition and fouling through performance monitoring,” said Hoshang Subawalla, executive vice president of Chemical & Monitoring Solutions for SUEZ – Water Technologies & Solutions. “OptiSea allows customers to visualize risk in real-time, reduce chemical usage and handling, improve control of suspended solids, and improve the environmental profile of discharge, while maximizing cycles of concentration and minimizing thermal pollution.”
Using seawater in cooling systems presents special challenges. The composition of seawater differs from place to place across the globe, and there are wide variations in the type and quantity of suspended solids. Macrofouling organisms in the water have a high growth rate, and seawater tends to have a high ionic strength. Taken together, these reasons mean that seawater cooling systems require specialized modeling, treatment, and monitoring systems to ensure peak production and optimized efficiencies, especially plate-and-frame heat exchangers.
OptiSea effectively models high ionic strength seawater, provides deposition and suspended solids control, and monitors deposition accumulation and heat transfer performance in realtime, while optimizing chemical usage with three layers of supervisory monitoring and control protection.
“OptiSea is the only program available in the industry that correctly models seawater deposition risk to optimize chemical treatment, offers new, non-phosphorus chemistry, and effectively monitors chemical feed and deposition online and in real-time for performance assurance,” said Jim Green, global product marketing leader for SUEZ – Water Technologies & Solutions. “OptiSea is ideal for the many plant operators we’ve talked to that want to maximize cycles of concentration or optimize performance and costs at 1.3 cycles.”
About SUEZ
With 90,000 people on the five continents, SUEZ is a world leader in smart and sustainable resource management. We provide water and waste management solutions that enable cities and industries to optimize their resource management and strengthen their environmental and economic performances, in line with regulatory standards. To meet increasing demands to overcome resource quality and scarcity challenges, SUEZ is fully engaged in the resource revolution. With the full potential of digital technologies and innovative solutions, the Group recovers 17 million tons of waste a year, produces 3.9 million tons of secondary raw materials and 7 TWh of local renewable energy. It also secures water resources, delivering wastewater treatment services to 58 million people and reusing 882 million m3 of wastewater. SUEZ generated total revenues of 17.3 billion euros in 2018.
Source: SUEZ