How to deal with a pump failure in the surface cooler of an ammonia chiller?
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I have a question for experts: How should a pump failure in the surface cooler of an ammonia chiller be handled? The pressure in the surface cooler is negative; currently, the water pump cannot operate, and the liquid level is rising. Is parking handling required? Some people say that it is possible to activate the condensate drain with table cooling; once the air intake conditions worsen and a positive pressure is created, the water can be drained. However, in this case the turbine’s performance declines, and the ammonia chiller needs to operate at reduced load. Have any of you experts encountered such a situation? How should it be resolved?
You can give it a try; reducing the chiller’s capacity is still better than shutting it down altogether
Has the pump outlet pressure decreased? Is it cavitation again?
Can’t the backup pump start? Also, the surface cooler should have a vacuum level interlock – if the liquid level can’t be maintained, how can the gas condense?
The pump must be suffering from cavitation; generally, the flow rate designed for a pump is sufficient to meet the load of the unit. Furthermore, it is not possible to use the pump’s drain to increase the pressure inside the surface cooler; doing so will allow air to enter the center of the pump’s impeller, causing the pump to suffer from air locking. This is by far the stupidest approach. Stop the pump, release the air, then start it again to see if that works. Otherwise, it’s likely that the pressure in the pipeline for transporting the condensate is too high, preventing the condensate from being sent out
Under normal circumstances, the condensate pumps operate in a 1-operational-1-redundant configuration. Check whether there is a temporary filter at the pump inlet to see if it is clogged! To ensure a certain negative pressure inside the condenser, the pump is started and stopped based on the liquid level Yes! !