Design of DCC & Vaporization Cooler

Customer:	Leading ASU designer.
End User:	Leading Steel Plant in India.
Location:	Northern India.
Tower Name:	Vaporization Cooler.
Tower Diameter:	1480 mm.
Mass Transfer Equipment:	High Performance Random Packing: Omni-Pak.

History:
The End user is a steel company established in 1907.

Process Overview:
The vaporization cooler is employed to cool water with waste nitrogen from Air Separation Unit. This chilled water from 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 & 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:
Design & optimization of Vaporization cooler in order to achieve close temperature approach at cold end. KEVIN to confirm

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

KEVIN also was to provide Process design and performance guarantee.

Solutions provided:
KEVIN selected Omni-Pak: high performance random packing, bed height was determined to suit the customer requirements.

Heat transfer calculations were done to simulate & confirm the output flow rate conditions. Hydraulic rating of tower was done to confirm minimal pressure drop requirement.

Mechanical designs for the high capacity column internals were generated; equipments were manufactured & supplied along with the Process design and performance guarantee.

Results achieved:
Chilled water outlet temperature of 12.65oC and flow rate of 20.5 m3/hr was achieved, with satisfactory performance of column.