VEGA Controls Ltd. - PRODUCT NEWS

(The quench water balance tank (cover removed) shows the typical build up and residue, which coats all surfaces) Radar Liquid Level System delivers big water savings Waste-to-energy plant Cory Riverside Energy recently selected a contactless liquid level radar from VEGA Contolrs to control water levels in its ash quencing system Cory Riverside Energy is a waste-toenergy plant to the east of London. With a population approaching nine million people, London has an incredible appetite for energy. Keeping the lights on in the face of increasing demand is one of the major challenges facing the city today. It produces around 22 million tonnes of waste every year. Or, to put it another way, enough to fill the largest skyscraper at Canary Wharf every eight days. Cory Riverside Energy utilise this waste to help provide London with a safe, secure, affordable and sustainable energy supply, which also makes great environmental sense. The site at Belvedere uses these materials, that would otherwise have gone to landfill, as a feedstock to generate electricity. As one of the largest operations of its kind in the UK, this facility generates around 5z5,oooMWh of electricity each year from processing 750,000 tonnes of waste. Additionally, they use the River Thames as a 'green highway' to move the waste from the centre of the city to the facility on their fleet of tugs and barges, removing around ioo,ooo truck movements a year off the UK capital's congested roads. Of course creating energy from waste creates a hot ash residue that needs cooling quickly. This is achieved by quenching it in water via an `ash expeller' system before stockpiling for disposal. Each system sits under one of the three main combustion chambers. With moving grates, the waste ash can drop into a water filled hopper below. The quenched ash is then scraped out by a ram and removed to the rear side via a conveyor into a stockpile chamber for loading out and disposal/recycling. The water used in the ash quenching process needs a constant level to be maintained through replenishment of either recycled or fresh mains supplies. This is monitored in a small balance tank off the main chamber. The optimum solution is of course to use recycled and recovered plant water, which reduces costs and environmental impact. However, a simple level probe to control the water will not do the job. The water contains many contaminants from the ash, readily adhering and building up on any surface and the 'ideal water level' control band is only over a few millimeters. The temperature runs about 5o°C, which produces a lot of condensation and sublimation onto the sensor. The total measuring range is only around i5cm, there can also be regular foaming on the surface, carrying ash residue and leaving behind deposits. The site engineer added extra process information: "The ram movement in the ash expeller also plays a part. This ram is used to keep the ash moving through the expeller. One of the main issues we have is that the ram movement causes the water level to fluctuate rapidly and it encourages foaming, the old level device often couldn't keep up or lost the signal and caused it to overflow." (Top trend shows the very high rate of mains water top up valve operations before with the guided wave radar system, the lower graph since the contactless 80GHz level radar was fitted. Now water is only beingused when needed.) If the probe is not reading or working correctly, the automatic safe 'default' is to keep fresh water continuously running into the ash expeller system. This results in excess water continually overflowing out to effluent treatment, so this incurs additional operational and environmental costs. Suddenly this 'simple' water level application is now looking a little more complex. The original plant was supplied with 'Guided Wave Radars' for the level control. While they are very good in extreme conditions, they can struggle to work reliably over very short ranges, especially when heavy coating of the guide rod element is factored in. They suffered both with signal loss and `run time' error, believed to be caused by the combination of build up, rapid level change, condensation and foaming surfaces. These errors caused the water replenishment system to run the fresh mains water `emergency top-up' almost continually. Ongoing maintenance and cleaning on the devices was high too. When a new 80GHz contactless liquid level radar from VEGA was launched and demonstrated it could work with millimeter resolution in a vessel as small as a 250m1 water bottle, Cory Riverside Energy engineers took notice - this could be a solution. Especially as it was claimed the radar could cope with condensation and build up on the sensor face too. After a successful on site demonstration test with a battery-powered unit, they installed a trial device on an existing nozzle. The VEGAPULS 64 worked very well, but it was soon discovered that sublimation deposits carried by foam was blocking the mounting nozzle and would soon become a problem. It was easy to monitor and diagnose via the echo curve available in the VEGATOOLS Bluetooth App. As a result a small low pressure purge was introduced inside the nozzle, which has cured this problem. Even though there is still some condensation and sublimation of the sensor face, it copes with this. The before and after trend of the water valve operation tells the story. Cory now has reduced usage of mains water, saving on operational costs and reducing their environmental impact. The radar has been installed and working reliably for a year and the other two ash expellers are also scheduled to be fitted with the new devices. The new radars are also being used in other applications, including measuring through plastic chemical tanks elsewhere on the site. For more information, please contact :- VEGA Controls Ltd Kendal House, Victoria Way, West Sussex, RH15 9NF United Kingdom Tel +44 1444 870055 Fax +44 1444 870080 E-Mail: info.uk@vega.com Web: www.vegacontrols.co.uk May 2018 Home - Search - Suppliers - Links - New Products - Catalogues - Magazines Problem Page - Applications - How they work - Tech Tips - Training - Events