Making demanding processes stable and efficient

Sodium sulfate (Na₂SO₄) is a valuable resource. It is synthetically produced, obtained from natural deposits, or occurs as a by-product in many chemical processes, for example in viscose production or flue gas desulfurization. Na₂SO₄ has a wide variety of applications in the detergent, paper and pulp industry as well as in the chemical industry and fabric dye manufacturing.

Textile fabric manufacturing uses up a lot of water while producing wastewater with a very high salt content and sometimes high levels of organic pollution. This wastewater would overload public sewage treatment plants. Therefore, the manufacturers themselves must deal with it. This is done under the strict guidelines of zero liquid discharge (ZLD): from reducing the amount of wastewater to completely eliminating wastewater discharge.

In many industrial operations, there is a great deal of valuable energy in liquid process streams. With the right technology, you can recover it and re-use it. Heat pumps play a key role here: They raise the temperature to a usable level and make industrial waste heat available for industrial processes or for the heat supply.

Water-cooled chillers and heat pumps are crucial for reliable refrigeration in many buildings and industrial processes. In order for them to work efficiently, the heat transfer process in evaporators and condensers must remain stable. Microfouling can noticeably impair the heat transfer process even in cooling water circuits that are supposed to be closed. This results in rising differential pressures, unnecessary efficiency losses, and a higher energy consumption for providing the required cooling capacity.

In many industrial processes, condensers are crucial for stable and efficient plant operation. In evaporator systems in the food, chemical, and process industries, in particular, large quantities of vapor must be reliably cooled and condensed. Hard well water is an obvious choice of cooling medium for this: It is often directly available, economically attractive, and can reduce the need for treated fresh water.

Reboilers supply the required heat for operating distillation columns and are therefore a key component of many processes in the food, chemical, textile, paper, sugar, oil, and refinery industries. The liquid from the column bottom is heated in the reboiler and then fed back to the column in order to keep the distillation process going.

Cooling water is more than just a process material. In power plants and large industrial plants, it protects critical components, ensures the transfer of heat, and directly affects efficiency, availability, and operating costs. Power plants move the largest cooling water flows in the world.

Seawater desalination plants – whether on land or as a floating solution on a barge – involve high investment costs and complex technical requirements. Regardless of whether they work using heat (MSF, MED, MEH) or membrane technology (RO, reverse osmosis), their profitability depends on maximum availability, a long service life for the core components, as well as low energy and chemical consumption.

Thermal seawater desalination plants that operate according to the multi-stage flash (MSF) or multi-effect distillation (MED) principle play a key role in the supply of drinking water. These methods are characterized by a multi-stage distillation process in which the number of evaporator effects is a key factor determining the energy use and thus the profitability of the plant.