Many
industries have a requirement to produce high purity demineralized water for
use in their boiler or process water systems. The demin water plant is an area
where there are multiple opportunities for ARC protective coatings for both
metal and concrete. One such opportunity for ARC is in the internal lining of
the anion, cation and mixed bed exchange resin tanks. These tanks contain
specialized resin microbeads that are used to remove cations and anions in raw
water and thereby produce deionized water with lower content of salts and other
impurities that could cause scaling or corrosion of various pieces of
equipment.
The
ion-exchange resins require frequent regeneration that is achieved by flushing the
cation exchange tank with dilute sulphuric or hydrochloric acid, and with
dilute sodium hydroxide for the anion exchange tank. It is
common to find the ion-exchange tanks lined with a vulcanizedebonite rubber. However,
over time the rubber degrades and becomes porous. This can lead to water
quality issues as well as corrosion of the underlying steel substrate. Patch
repairs using pre-vulcanized rubber is sometimes attempted but this usually
does not perform as well as the original rubber. In-situ replacement of the
entire rubber liner is very difficult so this presents an opportunity to offer
ARC as an alternative lining for these vessels.
Between
2002 and 2005, Roman Vrkoslav from our Czech Republic direct operation, was
involved in lining 8 vessels including cation, anion and mixed bed types using
ARC S2 at a thermal heating plant. All of these vessels are still in service
today after 16 years and have only required some small touch ups to repair small
spots caused by mechanical damage.
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Figure 1 - Ion
exchange vessels
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Figure 2 - ARC
S2 coating
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Figure 3 -
bottom of vessel with ARC S2
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Figure 4 - ARC
S2 lined vessel after 16 years-service
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If you want more information about this
application please contact Nick Wilson at wilsonn@chesterton.com
