Cooling water, where the cycles actually stop

Makeup treatment, chemical dosing, the consumers and the tower — with scaling and corrosivity answered as the two separate questions they are.

Cycles of concentration limited by a real mineral, named•Scaling and corrosivity answered as separate questions•Merkel tower rating on the same canvas as the consumers

Raw makeup

Makeup filter

Filter cake

Softener

Chemical dosing

CW pump

Process consumer

Return header

Cooling tower

Blowdown split

To basin

Blowdown to ETP

The actual dark-mode canvas: raw makeup is filtered, softened and dosed, the circulating water passes its consumers, and the tower rejects the heat while blowdown caps how far the salts concentrate.

Fork this model →

Two questions that are not the same question

A tower evaporates pure water and leaves the salts behind, so how far it can concentrate is the number that decides its water use. Scaling asks whether a mineral is supersaturated — a thermodynamic ion-activity criterion applied uniformly, so barite and gypsum are treated on the same footing as calcite. Corrosivity asks the opposite: mild steel is protected by a thin calcite film, and water undersaturated in calcite strips it. Langelier gives the direction, Ryznar how strongly, Puckorius substitutes the pH the alkalinity actually buffers to. They are empirical, calcite-only, and they are not a corrosion rate — chloride pitting and microbiologically influenced corrosion are mechanisms none of them can see.

\mathrm{SI} = \log_{10}\!\frac{(\gamma_M m_M)^{x}(\gamma_A m_A)^{y}}{K_{sp}} \quad\text{(will this mineral scale?)}

\mathrm{LSI} = \mathrm{pH} - \mathrm{pH}_s,\qquad \mathrm{RSI} = 2\,\mathrm{pH}_s - \mathrm{pH} \quad\text{(will the water corrode the steel?)}

\frac{KaV}{L} \;\;\text{(Merkel: what the fill has to deliver)}

Unit ops shipped for this vertical

Filter

Solids dewatering stage in the filter → dryer finishing train.

Run preset →

Mixer

Combines multiple streams into one, closing the mass and energy balance.

Run preset →

Pump

Raises liquid pressure; a flow-dependent head curve drives it in pressure-driven mode.

Run preset →

Heat exchanger

Two-stream counter-current exchanger — the crude/residue preheat that pays for a CDU's fired duty.

Run preset →

Splitter

Divides one stream into two or more by specified split fractions.

Run preset →

Live plant integration

Stream conductivity, makeup and blowdown flows and the tower approach from the plant into this flowsheet's twin comparison — cycles of concentration are a ratio of two measured flows, so a drift in either shows up as a scaling risk before it shows up on a tube.

See the Digital Twin platform →