Leading company in the sector of carbonated drinks recently hired J. Huesa services to develop a turnkey project for a water treatment plant. This new equipment was designed to cover future necessities in their facilities located in Spain.
This new plant is meant to produce a very low salinity water (the process requires conductivities under 15 uS/cm to be used in the external cleaning of containers prior to their packaging. To do that, J. Huesa designers decided to develop an all-in-one duplex softener and osmosis skid, capable to produce 3,0 m³/h of water. Also, a combined flushing and cleaning in place (CIP) system was include withing the skid.
Basic data used for simulations and model design were:
| Raw water flow | 4,3 m³⁄h |
| Permeate water flow | 3,0 m³/h |
| Reject water | 1,3 m³/h |
| Performance | 70% |
| Total required flow | 72 m³/h |
| Work hours | 24 h/día |
| Permeate water acummulation | 1,5 m³/h |
Firstly, raw water from the production process is chlorinated and passed through an existing carbon filter.
Once raw water is filtered, it goes to the softener where dissolved salts, mainly calcium and magnesium ions, are partially removed thanks to specific cationic resins contained inside those bottles. The “duplex” setting allows to regenerate one bottle while the other is switched automatically to the producing mode, which increases the water treatment plant availability
After that, softened water flows to the reverse osmosis. In order to prevent solid deposition all over the osmosis membranes, water is passed through a security 5 microns cartridge filter.
Once turbidity is reduced, water is pumped inside the pressure vessels, totally manufactured in food-grade stainless steel AISI 316L. The vertical centrifugal pump supply 4,3 m³/h of water and enough pressure to ensure that reverse osmosis phenomenon is carried out inside those vessels. The global performance is around 70-72%, which means the plant produces 3,0-3,1 m³/h of low salinity water (3,0-5,0 S/cm). The high salinity rejection (1,2-1,3 m³/h) produced by the reverse osmosis goes to the drainage system.
As it has been told, a flushing system was included withing the skid, in order to minimize any kind of fouling inside the pressure vessel. The flushing procedure can be timely programmed by the operators according to their necessities, and/or executed automatically each time the plant stops. This same equipment can be used to carry out some semi-automatic cleaning in place (CIP) manoeuvres, always under demand, and according to its process exigencies.
The osmosis plant is equipped with I&C elements (pressures transmitter and switches, flowmeters, conductivity and REDOX/pH sensors, pneumatic actuators, etc…), whose management is centralized in one stainless steel control cabinet, installed withing the same skid. Also, this cabinet includes a programmable logic controller (PLC) with human-machine interface (HMI) which allows to easily operate the plant. Our team from the I&C department designed this control cabinet to be fully integrated in the client´s SCADA.
All equipment was installed over a self-supporting frame, manufactured using ASME B36.19M / AISI 304L stainless steel pipes.
| Raw water | Permeate water | |
| Conductivity | 250 -260 µS/cm | 5 -7 µS/cm |
| Turbidity | 170 -180 mg/l | ≈0 mg/l |
| Hardness | 11 º HF | ≈0 ª HF |
Some of the advantages of using this technology are:
– Global solution totally personalized according to our client necessities, which allow him to increase its low salinity water by using high efficiency and reliable machinery with a considerably low maintenance.
– The control system enables to work 24/7 automatically, and under maximum guarantees of reliability with little supervision. The same way, the PLC allows field managers to easily get every piece of information related to the performance of the machine, which helps them take actions regarding the process.
– The area required for the skid installation is minimum.
– Thanks to its low electrical power consume and low maintenance.
