litem ronmental protection Efforts to reduce cooling water consumption in a region with limited water supply The water treatment plant typically referred to as an auxiliary plant — is essential for ensuring the continuity of production and plant ‘operations in a steelmaking facility. If water resources are limited, a non-conventional ‘approach is needed to design a water treatment plant with low ‘water consumption. For a steel plant in a desert area cooling equipment with low water ‘consumption and internal recycle of treated water drains hhas been adopted to reduce raw water consumption down to approximately only 120 m¥sh ona daily average. This allowed to respect the limits imposed by the availability of water on site and to maintain a safety margin for an extension planned for ‘the future Silvia Cattarino, Marco Colautt, Sandro Mansutt,Perteco sr, Tavagnacco, UD, Italy Contact: wwm.perteco.com Email info@perteco.com 54 Merintenations 5208 ‘ae 4] ees, Dram eoling towers _fvaporated i ret cling Hi] Product iy to 1 |cateren creas) i there dane iain from feoling towers Figure 1. Simplified process diagram of a traditional water treatment plant In a steel plant, the water resoure is vital to the operations since water is used as cooling fluid for the equip- ment and the steel. Although referred toas “auxiliary equipment”, the water treatment plant is essential for ensur- Ing the continuity of production. Even though water saving hasbecomean in- creasingly felt need, usually no partic- ularattention is paid to it in the design process for production facilities. A co ventional water treatment plant uses open cooling circuits, with cooling tow- ersand the resulting evaporative water loss (figure 1). Perteco, an engineering company based in Italy, dealt with acasein which the water shortage called for a non-tra- ditional approach, An unconventional water treatment plant was cequired to serve a steelmaking facility under con. struction in a desert area. The extreme environmental conditionsand thestrin- gent water consumption limits made the study and the implementation of this projecta real engineering challenge, which has meanwhile been successful: ly coped with. To comply with the re quired limits of water consumption, it ‘was necessary to fully review the usual approach, studying ad hoc solutions, both with regards to process and equip: ment selection, Cooling requirements For the project on hand, the demand- ed cooling water capacity is approxi: ‘mately 10,000 m*/h, for several users: EAE (capacity: 170 9, lade furnace (capacity: 170), six-strand continuous casting ma chine, airseparation plant, ment plant, rs (compressed air station, sve), The total water capacity is divided up into several circuits. The totalamount of thermal power to be removed is in the ‘order of 200 MW. it dedicat- ed to the cooling ofthe fume treatment plant distinguishes tselffrom the others in terms of the temperatures required, In particular, the input temperature is higher than the others (55°C instead of 35°C or 40°C). The capacity and thermal power of this circuit corresponds to ap- proximately half of the total Adverse factors for the design of the water treatment plant are the climatic conditions, scarcity of raw waterand the margin required. The steelmaking plant was designed to produce 1,500,000 t/ year of billets and is placed in a desert area, characterized by an annual tem: perature range between -16"Cand 445°C.Environmental protection and very adverse climatic conditions. ‘The maximum wet bulb temperature i 25°C and the maximum dry bulb tem- perature is 45°C (design values). These {temperatures define the lower unseach- able limit of water cooling by evapora: ton (traditional solution with evapo- rative cooling towers) and dry coolers (coolers with closed circuits) respect ly. These temperatures have to be con sidered for the design of cooling equip: ment with an adequate margin, which is typically of 5°C, So it wll not be pos. sible to reach temperatures below 30°C. and 50°C, adopting the traditional evap- orativecooling towers or the dry coolers as alternative solution. The raw water available on site comes froman upstream civil waste-watertreat- ment plant, Raw water consumption has been strictly limited to 180.m2/h (max ‘mum value as average daily water flow). ditionally, a margin of 2096 in raw wa- terconsumption hasto be taken intoac count for future expansions planned for ‘thestee site. So the maximum rave water consumption Is below 180 m"/h. Areverse osmosis treatments applied to treat the raw waterand produce make- ‘up water in the quantity and quality re- quired to compensate water lossesin the plant. Also chemicals have to be added othe make-up water to improve its char- acteristics and to avoid scale and corro- sion problems inside the circuits. With the traditional solution, raw water con: sumption is estimated to amount to ap- proximately 600 m/h (worst day case. Genius solution to a challenging task Itis evident that the required con: sumption (below 180 m¥h) is much lower than that obtainable with a tradi- Airoutlet Cold water oe ee enn Hot water Ce old Y in i Dry cater example) tional approach, including reverse os- mosis for the raw water treatment and chemicals addition to make-up water (approximately 600 m3/h). The target is toidentify a configuration for the water treatment plant which: respects the limits imposed on the available raw water, ~ ensurescontinuous and reliableoper- ation, = provides an acceptable solution in terms of investment and manage- ment costs The solution was found by acting on two fronts: Furst, appropriate equip- ment had to be chosen for water cool- ing. Second, discharges from the water treatment plant had to be recovered by \way of an appropriate treatment to en- able re-use within the same water treat- ‘ment plant. Appropriate equipment. Dry coolers and hybrid-cooling towers (figure 2) represent viable alternatives to reduce water cooling consumption. Infact, the dy coolers coo! the water circulating in a closed coil without leakage. Cooling, Airoutlet yr cooler (example) Figure 3 Closed ciruit coolers and comparison with the traditional evaporative coolers 56 Mer iseraationa! 5208 Evaporative Hybrid Figure 2. Hybrid towers of a water ‘treatment plant occurs by heat exchange through forced flow of ambient ar, with the use of fans Included in the cooling equipment. ‘The hybrid-cooling towers repre. sent an intermediate solution between the traditional cooling towers and dry coolersand can operate in either wet or dry mode depending on climatic condi- tions. Even in such equipment the wa- terintended for the cooling ofthe plants circulates in a closed coll. Cooling can be performed by spraying cooling water {awet) from the outside or by forced ven. Ulation only (ary) For the purpose of comparisons be- tiween the different equipment, it was assumed that the same thermal power hhas to be removed and that there were ‘no environmental limits for closed cir. cuits coolers that would prevent their use. Information derived from data from different suppliers has been taken into account. Figure 3 indicates the re sults based on data from different sup: pllers. It seems that the dry solution Is, the best option, In reality, the typeof equipment used thas to take into consideration the site Se AGIOS NMR mean ig 00 | 7 * noe Fa a 7 » DryEnvironmental protection Foure 4 Selected equipment with closed circuit for low water consumption wie Equipment toberocted itterent reat : Gimplified : arawing) | i Evaporated water stream with, aracteistie Concentrate! Figure 5. DR:WTP included in a water treatment plant conditions. According to the climatic conditions and the required inlet tem- perature at the various consumption points, it was not possible to instal the day coolers in ll ciscuits. Their applica tion turned out tobe ideal only for coot- ing the circuit for the fume treatment plant, due the high temperature accept- ced here, The equipment to be adopted ‘was therefore selected as shown in fig ure 4: dry coolers for the FTP circuit and hybrid towers forall other circuits. ‘With theadoption of thé above-men- tioned equipment, the estimated con sumption of raw water also considering the asmosis process for its initial treat 58 Mrrletematonsl 208 ‘ment, wasstill not within limits, In fact the estimated dally average consump- tion was approximately 160 m/h and theadequate safety margin was not met, In order to achieve additional saving, Of raw water, a recovery facility of the drains (drains recovery water treatment plant: DR-WTP) was adopted, using the experience gained by Perteco techni- cians during the provision of a similar facility serving a direct reduction plant also located in a desert territory. Drain recovery. Figure 5 shows the simplified process diagram with refer tence to the circuits cooled with hybrid Hybrid coolers installed in all circuits except in the FTP circuit = 18 coolers with different sizes + the biggest: 11 mx 2.2 m x 4.2 (H) 2 fanseach, 11 kvWifan Dry coolers stalled only in FTP circuit =30 coolers with the same size: ola 12.5 mx 2.4 mx2.8 m(H) 18 fansleach, 3.1 kW/fan coolers and the adoption of a plant for the recovery of drains. The design flow rate forall drainstreated by the DR-WT?. is 63 m'/h, as maximum capacity. This capacity includes the drains from the various hybrid cooling towers and the concentrate discharged from the reverse ‘osmosis that treats the raw water, Much, more than 50% of the discharges can be recovered from the recovery system, through adequate pre-treatment and dedicated reverse osmosis, obtaining approximately 40 m*fh as average daily ‘water with quality similar to raw water, ‘This recovered flow rate corresponds to the raw water saved by adopting the DRWTP. The DRWTP was integrated in the water treatment plant process flow iagram, achieving a consumption of imately 120 ne/h as a daily average. It was considered as the final solution to the challenging task (table 1). raw water of appro Comparison with traditional solutions ‘The final comparison between the so- lution adopted and the traditional one is, summarizedin table 2, glvingadvantag- esand disadvantages. Although elect cal energy consumption willincrease by approximately 25%, evaluated as yearly average, resulting in additional energy costs compared to the traditional solu tion, itis interesting to note that both in the traditional and in the adopted so. lution the main part, namely more than