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Situation
An aerospace facility in the northeast
provides products and services to the
military, general aviation and space
industries. This facility is 300,000 sq. ft.
and employs over 700 people. It also
deals specifically with the special
fabrication of optics for satellites and
telescopes.
The supervisors at this site take pride
in maintaining an efficient, safe facility.
In 2000, these supervisors looked for
ways to save energy and equipment
costs with their steam system that
consists of three boilers: two 700 hp
and one 300 hp. The supervisors
discovered that their condensate
corrosion inhibition program was not
performing as well as they expected.
Corrosion rates in the condensate
system were high and pipe replacement
was costly. Condensate return, plagued
with high iron levels, caused feedwater
iron levels to skyrocket above the
ASME guideline for Industrial Fire Tube
Boilers. The facility supervisors also
noted that the current program utilized
a hazardous chemical, and if overfed or
spilled, this product could have adverse
health effects on their employees.
After reviewing other industry standard treatments, this aerospace facility
asked Nalco Company if they had a
better solution.
Program
The facility supervisors needed a
better solution to the hazardous, nonperforming program they currently had
Performance
With the Nalco ACT program in
place, the local, on-site Nalco sales
engineer wanted to quantify the
improvement from switching from
their old program. The sales engineer gathered iron levels from water
samples prior to the implementation
of the Nalco ACT program. Earlier in
the year, iron levels reached as high
as 2.1 ppm in the condensate system.
ASME Standards recommend less
than 100 ppb of iron for feedwater in
systems at this operating pressure.
With the iron levels so high in the
condensate re-turn, the facility
exceeded these iron levels in the
feedwater. The facility was anxious
to see the effect of the Nalco ACT
program on iron levels.
After one week of feeding the Nalco
ACT product, iron levels dropped in
the main condensate return from
over 2.0 ppm to 0.9 ppm. The iron
levels continued to drop through the
end of the year and by February
2001, iron levels were lower than the
iron tests control range. Figure 1
illustrates how the iron levels
Figure 1 After implementation of the Nalco ACT program, iron levels decreased from 2.1 to
0.1 ppm.
Return on Investment
The facility recognized two areas of
improvement and success: increased
safety and decreased corrosion rates.
They also minimized their hazardous
material exposure as soon as they
implemented the Nalco ACT program.
Reduction in corrosion rates was
realized within a week and levels
continued to drop throughout the
following months.
Reducing their corrosion rates correlates to pipe replacement savings and
extending steam trap life. The supervisors at this facility estimate that they
will save over $10,000 this year in pipe