Challenge

The quantity and quality of water from an existing water treatment system were not meeting the expectations of plant personnel from a Midwestern power plant.  The challenges they faced:

• Increased consumption of chemicals, energy, water and manpower
• Inadequate production due to long, inadequate or multiple regenerations
• Lower water quality due to inadequate regenerations

Plant personnel needed a quick, dependable solution that would maximize production, decrease expenses and improve water quality.

Solution

Through USFilter’s EP&S (Engineered Parts and Services) group, the existing system was upgraded and retrofitted.  In this example, the existing system was already a packed bed system that was operating erratically and not to design specifications.  The upgrade included:

• Upsizing the acid chemical and regenerant dilution water pumps for increased regeneration flow rates
• Adding compaction pumps for the additional compaction step
• Changing the upper laterals to allow the resin fines to be discharged
• Installing UPS resin for better performance
• Making some logic changes to the existing control system

While this installation was already a packed bed design, the EP&S group can also convert existing co-current or countercurrent softener and two bed (also referred to as a separate bed) installations into packed bed systems. 

Results

Existing co-current or countercurrent systems can be upgraded to packed bed systems resulting in:

• Lower costs due to less consumption and more efficient use of chemicals, energy, water and manpower
• Improved quality of treated water and quantity
• Significantly less waste water volumes and disposal charges
• Maximized performance using the same footprint