Background
The customer is a steel company established in 1907.

Process Overview
The vaporization cooler is used to cool water with waste nitrogen from an air separation unit. This chilled water from the vaporization cooler is further passed on for utilization in the direct contact air cooler.

In packed towers, heat is transferred by means of intimate contact between the fluids. The absence of fouling and scaling in the packed columns results in achieving higher heat transfer rate and in turn higher heat transfer coefficients. This leads to closer temperature approaches between the two fluids thereby considerably reducing the initial equipment costs. In addition to the above, lower pressure drops can be achieved using packed columns.

Customer Requirements
The customer was in need of design and optimization of the vaporization cooler in order to achieve close temperature approach at cold end. Further requirements included:

• Chilled water outlet temperature
• Chilled water outlet flow rate
• Waste nitrogen outlet conditions
• Minimal pressure drop
  

Munters also was to provide process design and performance guarantee.

Solutions provided
Munters selected Omni-Pak^® high performance random packing. The bed height was determined to suit the customer requirements.

Further, heat transfer calculations were done to simulate and achieve the output flow rate conditions. Hydraulic rating of tower was done to obtain minimal pressure drop requirement.

Mechanical designs for the high capacity column internals were generated. Further, equipment were manufactured and supplied along with the process design and performance guarantee.

Results achieved
Chilled water outlet temperature of 12.65°C (54.77°F) and flow rate of 20.5 m³/hr (723.85 ft³/hr) was achieved, with satisfactory performance of column.