Niagara Blower Company

WSAC at power facility

Saying that the closed-loop, evaporative Wet Surface Air Cooler (WSAC) is a practical solution to a wide range of heat transfer applications for power facilities in simple and combined cycle plants, the Niagara Blower Company, a design-build manufacturer, has introduced the product to the market.

According to the manufacturer, the applications of WSAC include, auxiliary loop cooling, vacuum steam condensing, heat recovery steam generator blowdown cooling, and turbine inlet air cooling.

The company lists the following benefits of the product:

• Simpler system design
• Lower parasitic energy (HP)
• Reduced water use and the ability to use poor quality water as makeup
• Ability to run dry during lower ambient temperatures for more water savings
• Can be used for water management in certain applications
• Competitive installed cost
• Minimal maintenance required

Niagara Blower Company, pointing out that water use and disposal issues have become increasingly important in power plant design, highlight that sources of water that WSAC can handle include cooling tower blowdown, reverse osmosis (RO) discharge, condensate, pond water, gray water and sewage effluent. The manufacturer claims that due to wide tube spacing and use of more durable materials for construction, higher cycles of concentration can be achieved. It further claims that commonly used for adding capacity in ‘thermally challenged’ plants, WSAC coolers and condensers offer additional direct cooling without requiring additional tower capacity or makeup water.

According to the company, WSAC can double up as a first-stage evaporator, because, it says that the more water that can be evaporated in the heat transfer mode, the less needs to be handled in secondary (and costly) water treatment systems. Thus, the product has an advantage for zero discharge facilities, it claims.

Product features:

• Each WSAC system is custom-designed to fit a specific heat transfer application.
• Design parameters are based on customer specifications for input and output temperatures as well as ambient weather conditions.
• Units vary in size from smaller packaged/skidded to large field-erected units.