Blockage of the gas lift tray in the acidic water treatment unit
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Our plant currently has an acidic water stripping unit with a capacity of 60 tons per hour. After 45 days of operation, the floating valves on the trays inside the tower became clogged with black substances, preventing them from moving up and down and thereby reducing the efficiency of tray treatment. Upstream units include catalytic, hydrogenation, and atmospheric/ vacuum distillation units. Dear friends, please discuss together possible solutions.
This requires pretreatment of the water, such as using filters or air flotation.
1. The trays in the stripping tower are clogged; this is likely due to a high open area ratio of the trays and a large diameter of the tower, which means that the operating load of the tower is low. The lack of sufficient turbulence on the tray is the main cause of blockage ； 2. Pipe blockage is likely due to inadequate design aspects such as the material selection for the pipes; in other words, an excessively large pipe diameter results in a low flow velocity inside the pipe, as well as a high roughness of the inner wall – all of these are major causes of scaling and blockage. In this regard, first, the pipe diameter should be chosen to be small rather than large; second, at lower temperatures, plastic pipes, especially those with a steel framework, are preferable. 3. By the same logic, when selecting the flow rate of the fluid inside the tubes of a heat exchanger, especially a shell-and-tube heat exchanger, it is better to choose a higher flow rate rather than a lower one; otherwise, blockages are almost inevitable. Conditionally, it is recommended to use welded plate heat exchangers