AquaVantage Commercial and Industrial Applications

A property in the Docklands area of London is a building consisting of two towers with 17 floors each with one Vapac humidifier installed per floor. Due to hard scale deposits the plastic steam cylinders in each humidifier had to be disposed of every 3/4 months at a cost of £60.00 each.
Our digital water treatment system fitted on the rising main has resulted in all of the cylinders descaling. In addition to saving on replacement elements in two water heaters per floor, the heat transfer within the heaters has also been improved.

Initial yearly cost £60x3x2x17=£6120 Cost of Treatment £2500. Payback 5 months

A Basingstoke company was recommended to replace all of their toilet pedestals as hard scale deposits were blocking the water channels and also restricting the water flow of the urinals at an approximate cost of £24,000. Within 3 months of installing our Digital Water Treatment system on the rising main the pedestals, urinals and all other facilities in the building were operating normally.

Replacement Cost £24000. Cost of Treatment £2300. Payback Immediate

A hotel in Slough has 90 bedrooms and our Digital Water Treatment system was installed on their 100mm rising main and flow and return to the 3 boilers. The boiler inspection every 6 months reveals a light dusting of Aragonite and all the heating tubes intact. The boiler inspection and cleaning takes 2 or 3 hours where it used to take 2 days.

The maintenance manager at the hotel declares the usual shower head cleaning of scale deposits was done on a monthly basis. He now regularly goes 30 weeks before he has to inspect a few heads. Disinfection against Legionella is still carried out at monthly intervals. Salt consumption is much reduced and is only used in a few appliances.

A newspaper print manufacturer in Kent is using stream water filtered through a membrane drum filter in its processes and the filter had to be dismantled and cleaned of hard scale every 2/3 weeks. Installation of our Digital Water Treatment system on the 20 inch diameter supply pipe reduced existing hard scale deposits to Aragonite powder in 10 days and now the client occasionally hoses down the filters to maintain flow efficiency.

Power Station

The largest coal fired power station in Western Europe, has 12 parabolic cooling towers and 6 transformers. Each transformer supplies some 2% of the power to the National Grid. Cooling water is abstracted from the River Ouse, filtered, dosed with bactericide and pumped as coolant water. There is some re-circulation but the majority of the coolant left after evaporation is returned to the river. For practical purposes, we view this system as a straight to waste 'once through' system.

Sodium Hypochlorite is the bactericide used.

Dilution water is taken from the main coolant flow via an 8" O/D side-stream to the Injection House. Sodium Hypochlorite is injected via a further 2" O/D side-stream (sketch refers). Effectively there are 3 points at which Sodium Hypochlorite is injected:

            1. At the point of Injection to the 2" O/D side-stream.
            2. Where the dilution from the 2" O/D side-stream mixes with the water in the 8" O/D side-stream.
            3. Where the further dilution from the 8" O/D side-stream mixes with the main coolant flow.

The Problem
The abstracted water has an average Calcium hardness of 400ppm with a pH of 8.0. This solution already has the potential to scale.

Injection of Sodium Hypochlorite causes the pH to rise significantly. The dilution water in the 8" pipe, down stream of the 2" side-stream has a pH measuring never less than 10.0.

The rise in pH gives rise to supersaturation and the Calcium precipitates as Calcium Carbonate forming a hard rock fouling (calcite) in the pipes. This fouling was removed by acid washing every 2 days and water jetting every 2 - 3 months.

The Solution
Our Digital Water Treatment System was fitted to the 8" dilution side-stream pipe upstream of the point of injection. The effect of the Scaleban electro-magnetic and induced electric fields is to bind the free ions of Calcium (Calcium Bi-carbonate which is reactive) to form Calcium Carbonate crystals (inert).

In brief, Calcium Bi-carbonate in the river water is converted to Calcium Carbonate crystals which flow suspended in the coolant and are returned to the river.

3 weeks after application and with no acid washing, the pipes were examined. Instead of the usual 1/2" hard rock limescale expected, only a thin film of sludge was seen. This sludge is easily removed by wiping. During the 3 follow-up service visits, the outputs will be fine tuned to obviate even the film of sludge.