Water Consumption Savings using a Dry-Air Cooler

An enquiry came through our online contact form from Superglass - an independent manufacturer of glass mineral wool insulation in the UK.
The customer outlined that Superglass use a lot of water as part of their manufacturing process and needed a solution to help them save water.
To better understand the project, a team visited site and met with key stakeholders.
We learned that a cullet system uses water to transport and cool up to 8000kg/h of molten glass from the furnaces.
The cullet water returns to an outdoor open tank in order to cool naturally in preparation for reuse.
However, with increasing volumes of output to meet global demand for insulation the cooling tank was inadequate and over-temperature water would be dumped to drain and replenished with fresh mains water.
In order to avoid this unnecessary over-consumption of water, Superglass wanted to explore alternative methods of rapidly cooling the water.

We defined the requirement as the need to cool 46.7m3/hr of water from 50 degrees to around 30 degrees all year round.
Taking into account the above requirements, we sought to avoid the use of expensive chiller systems and instead focused on selecting a Dry-Air Cooler.
In selecting a cooler we considered size, efficiency, noise, leaving temperature and most importantly, performance.
By installing a Dry-Air Cooler into their existing process, we would create a closed loop system to cool the process water for reuse without the need for draining and replenishment.
This cooler would therefore reduce fresh water consumption.
Additionally, the selected cooler runs low noise fans at a maximum of 86 decibels, addressing the clients concerns over the potential noise of running a Dry-Air Cooler.

To ensure an efficient turnkey installation of the Dry-Air Cooler, we specified pipework, electrical loads and ancillary equipment such as pumps, vibration matting, expansion vessels etc.

Onsite pipework, electrical and civil works were undertaken by the client while we supplied the ancillary equipment.
We delivered the cooler to site, supervised the installation and performed commissioning and handover.
Commissioning included visual inspection of the pumps, cooler configuration set-up and checking everything was properly functioning.
At this stage, it is essential we then test the process so that we know it delivers on all of our customers' required parameters and expectations.
Superglass had made clear that the out temperature of the water had to be at the highest 35°C. However, we managed to achieve a temperature of 20°C, thus exceeding expectations.
The success of our solution is dependant on the plant uptime but our client is expected to save a minimum of 75m3/d and as high as 250m3/d, which is a tremendous amount of water saved.