Making sensitive water circuits hygienic and efficient

Palm oil mills, which use the wet process for extracting oil, produce a large amount of process wastewater: so-called palm oil mill effluent (POME). It contains high concentrations of dissolved and undissolved organic substances. Strict environmental regulations and the goal of sustainable production require efficient POME concentration. This makes it possible to reliably separate water and solids.

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.