Baby, it’s cold outside! How are your chemical feeds handling it?
Winter phosphorus removal from wastewater is simplified with Neo WaterFX.
Another polar vortex blasted into the US in January, driving temperatures below freezing even deep into Florida. Many parts of the US experienced record cold for prolonged periods. How did your chemical feeds fare?
Cold temperatures can be particularly brutal on chemical feeds for phosphorus removal.
Chemical feed lines are typically small diameter and low flow, making them particularly vulnerable to freezing in cold temperatures. To further complicate operations, many of the phosphorus removal chemicals like ferric chloride are extremely corrosive, making them incompatible with metal tanks and piping, and therefore difficult to heat trace. Aluminum-based products also begin to gel and thicken as temperatures drop below 32 Degrees Fahrenheit, making pumping difficult.
Another commonly used coagulant for P removal, Poly Aluminum Chloride (PAC or PACl), is extremely difficult to manage during cold snaps, as the staff at the City of Dallas Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Dallas, Georgia can attest. PAC gels at around 35 degrees Fahrenheit, above the freezing point of water, making it impossible to pump. Worse, it does not “melt” back into solution when heated, or when the environmental temperatures return to “normal”, rather remaining in a thickened, gelled state – a bit like Jello at room temperature. Thus, sudden cold snaps or failed heat tracing leave an operational mess!
But the worst is caustic.
Another operational challenge of using traditional coagulants, including ferric and aluminum-based products, as well as PAC, to remove phosphorus in wastewater is their high acidity. This acidity requires yet another chemical feed, typically caustic, to restore alkalinity and adjust the pH.
Caustic has a high freezing point of +52 Degrees Fahrenheit at 50% by weight, the most economical concentration. But even the lowest freezing point of -13 Degrees Fahrenheit, for a 20% solution, can be a problem when the cold is unanticipated and unusual for your location. Many southern plants just weren’t designed for even brief periods of below-zero temperatures. Sudden arctic blasts can cause serious operational issues with frozen caustic lines. Thawing those lines is difficult, and due to the characteristics of caustic, is extremely hazardous, requiring full protective gear.
Neo WaterFX’s -40 Degrees Fahrenheit point requires no special handling and will probably eliminate the need to feed caustic.
WaterFX eliminates the need for heated tanks and pipe tracing due to its extremely low freezing point of minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit. But even better, the lower dosage requirement and higher pH mean you can probably eliminate cold weather headache number one, your caustic feed! That is right, most clients who switched to Neo WaterFX eliminated their caustic feeds!
Simplify winter operation and enjoy effortless P compliance with WaterFX.
The City of Dallas WWTP found that WaterFX did indeed simplify their cold weather operation by replacing PAC for their phosphorus removal. But they also discovered that cold weather simplification was just one of many benefits that made switching to WaterFX both cost-effective and an operational game changer.
