News

CROWN Solutions, Inc. Technical Resource

Copper Removal from Cooling Tower Blowdowns
By: Chris Howell and Dave Christophersen

Discharge of industrial non-contact cooling water (cooling tower blowdown) to waterways has been, and continues to be, performed worldwide. Several local, state, and federal agencies administer the compliance programs necessary to insure that the integrity of the public water ways are maintained. Discharge limits for the constituents in the discharged water continue to be lowered as better detection limits are realized and technologies (physical and chemical) advance to allow the reduction of the various targeted constituents. In addition, greater environmental pressure brought on by politics (local, state, and federal) and technical requirements continue to make discharge to a waterway more and more difficult.

Metals in the discharged water have always been a concern and are even more so today. Potable water standards are now requiring much lower metals concentrations in the water that we drink due to potential health risks and therefore, the water discharged into surface water receiving bodies must be as clean and sometimes, cleaner than the water supplied to a facility as raw water or potable drinking water to protect the water that we drink and the ecosystem of the receiving water.

One constituent that is being targeted on more regular basis is copper in non-contact cooling water blowdown. Copper occurs naturally in the makeup water used by industrial facilities and also is introduced into the noncontact cooling water (water used to cool a process without coming in direct contact with that process) as a result of corrosion byproducts from the industrial cooling system components. Additionally, to minimize water usage in a non-contact cooling system, the best acceptable operations and engineering practice are to concentrate the non-contact cooling water as much as possible by minimizing blowdown to save on water and treatment chemical costs. This practice elevates that concentration of any impurities in the non-contact cooling water, and in particular for this discussion, the copper concentration.

Treatment Options
The treatment of industrial wastewaters is a common practice. For some facilities, the wastewater treated is primarily process wastewater from the production of the end product manufactured at the facility and the cooling tower blowdown may be a small portion of the overall hydraulic or constituent loading of the wastewater treatment plant. In other facilities, the only “wastewater” is the cooling tower blowdown and as such, the blowdown water is permitted for discharge as “non-contact” cooling water. The discharged water must meet the discharge limits set fourth in the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit.

Manufacturing facilities must meet compliance of the discharge permit and periodically the permit parameters are re-evaluated to insure compliance with local, state, and federal requirements. If the compliance parameters for discharge are changed, the facility may be required to install a wastewater treatment strategy or wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) to comply with the discharge limits.

The options for metals removals from cooling tower blowdown are:

1. Change the operation of the cooling system by reducing the cycles of concentration and therefore reducing the concentration of metals in the blowdown. This option may not be allowed if the facility also has a hydraulic and/or volumetric limit assigned to its NPDES. This practice does not minimize natural resources as it most likely will require more sourced makeup water and a greater volume of water discharged to the environment.
2. Install a biological process that addresses the metals of concern. These processes can be expensive and very site-specific, and typically are less resistant to upsets if a toxic component is introduced into the system that affects the biology of the process.
3. Install a physical/chemical treatment process whereby the metals are removed by adding treatment chemicals and allowing the precipitated metals to be removed by clarification and/or filtration. This type of process can be further broken down as follows:
   
   a. Traditional clarifiers and media filtration.
   b. Electro coagulation and media filtration.
   c. Filtration and ion exchange.
   d. Membrane process utilizing microfiltration (MF), ultrafiltration (UF), or reverse osmosis (RO). RO would not typically be used for primary metals removal because it is not tolerant to total suspended solids (TSS) MF and UF would be used for TSS reduction followed by RO for total dissolved solids (TDS) reduction if wastewater reuse is desired.
   

Membrane Technologies
Several membrane technologies are available to use for industrial water preparation and wastewater recycling. Typical membrane processes for solids removal include microfiltration (MF) and ultrafiltration (UF). Major designs include spiral wound, hollow fiber, and tubular. Spiral membranes are relatively inexpensive and may handle oils with the right membrane type as long as total solids are low. Hollow fiber designs for UF and MF are a popular configuration used today on surface water and water reuse applications due to the ability to handle relatively tough waters at a reasonable cost and with a small footprint. One-inch tubular designs can handle high solids and high levels of emulsified oil concentrations. Smaller diameter 1/4” to 1/2” tubular modular designs have lower capital costs than oneinch tubes, but have more limitations than the oneinch tubes.

Pore size can be used to define the type of membrane. Membrane pore sizes are commonly expressed as nominal which means that a membrane with a specified nominal pore size or Molecular Weight Cutoff (MWCO) would be expected to remove 90% of material of that size. The largest pores in these membranes are likely larger than the nominal pore size. Variations in pore size occur depending upon the membrane type and manufacturer.

Microfiltration ranges in size from approximately 0.05 mm to 1.0 mm.

Ultrafiltration is a tighter membrane and is in the micron range of approximately 0.005 - 0.1 mm. UF is typically expressed in terms of molecular weight cutoff and ranges from 1,000 Daltons for a very tight UF membrane to approximately 500,000 Daltons for a very open UF membrane. By convention for MWCO, it is assumed that the molecules are a polysaccharide of that molecular weight; so actual filtration effectiveness varies according to the specific chemistry of the molecule. There is some overlap between the stated ranges for MF and UF, so a membrane with a pore size that might be considered to be a loose UF membrane might also be considered to be a tight MF membrane depending on the industry or manufacturer.

Membrane Material
There are several different materials used to make membranes. The membrane material, the actual chemistry, and how the membrane is made vary by manufacturer. Some materials that are used include polysulfone (PS), polyethersulfone PES), polyacrylonitrile (PAN), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), polypropylene (PP), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), and ceramics.

The membranes differ in their hydrophilic nature, tolerance to oil, chlorine tolerance, applicable pH range, chemical cleaning, strength, and cost.

PS and PES are popular for suspended solids filtration because the material is highly hydrophilic which allows for high flux rate, has good cleanability, and has relatively high resistance to organic fouling. It is also chlorine tolerant to 200 PPM free chlorine or higher. They are not good for oily water and can be brittle without proper support.

PAN also has high hydrophilicity and is a good choice for oily water. It is relatively low cost, but is brittle and has some chemical resistance restrictions.

PVDF is not as hydrophyllic as PAN, but is also a good choice for oil, stronger than PAN and more chemically resistant.

PP is quite a bit less hydrophilic than PS, PES, PAN, and PVDF and is also not tolerant of chlorine. It is low cost and has high pH tolerance.

PTFE is even less hydrophilic than PP.

Ceramics offer high chemical and thermal tolerance, but generally are expensive.

Spiral Wound UF
Spiral wound UF membranes are made from flat sheet membranes rolled into a spiral around a permeate core tube. These membranes are commonly made of polysulfone. The membrane modules looks similar to spiral wound RO modules and are popularly housed in 8” diameter pressure vessels. Feedwater, pressurized to about 20-100 psi, is fed to one end of the spiral module. Feedwater travels across the feed spacer and is forced through the membrane, leaving behind suspended solids and particulates larger than the membrane MWCO. Filtered water then travels in a spiral to the filtrate core tube at the center of the membrane module from where it can be transported out of the membrane module as UF filtrate.

The solids that are filtered out of the water by the membrane are removed by means of a cross-flow velocity that continuously scours the membrane surface. To maintain a cross-flow velocity at the recommended levels, a proportion of water that enters the system as feed leaves as concentrate. To achieve high water recovery, roughly half of this water is recycled to the feed stream, with a blowdown stream used to remove solids from the system. Most spiral wound systems cannot be physically backwashed; therefore, over time, the membranes become fouled and the feed pressure increases. At a certain feed pressure set point, chemical clean-in-place (CIP) is performed. This can occur as often as every few weeks to several months, depending on the feedwater quality.

Hollow Fiber UF and MF
Hollow fiber membrane systems for filtration have gained wide acceptance in surface water treatment for potable water production. For potable water applications, hollow fiber membrane systems can guarantee removal of bacteria and single cell organisms such as giardia and cryptosporidium because the integrity of the membrane system can be verified with integrity tests of the membranes in the field. This is done by applying air pressure to the membrane and monitoring for pressure loss and visually looking for air bubbles. Extensive application of hollow fiber UF and MF for potable water production has led to the costs of this technology coming down to the point where it is cost competitive with conventional water treatment and spiral wound UF systems for RO pretreatment.

Industrial applications include wastewater recycle after primary or secondary treatment, metals removal, raw water clarification, and RO pretreatment.

Hollow fiber membranes used for filtration in industrial water treatment may either be UF or MF membranes. The I.D. of fibers is typically 0.5 mm (0.02 inch) – 1.2 mm (0.047 inch) diameter. Up to several thousand hollow fibers are bundled into a membrane element. At either one or both ends of the membrane element, the fibers are cast in epoxy. Based upon membrane design, feedwater can either be fed to the inside of the fibers, with filtrate leaving from the outside of the fibers (inside-out), or else feedwater can be directed to the outside of the fibers with filtrate leaving from the inside of the fibers (outside-in).

A UF system can be set up with membrane modules arranged in parallel or blocks as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: UF System

Hollow Fiber Modes of Operation: Dead-end or Cross-flow

Dead-End Flow
For relatively cleaner waters such as front-end treatment, hollow fiber systems are commonly operated in a dead-end mode. All of the feedwater is directed across the membrane, leaving the filtered particles behind on the membrane. Particulates are removed from the membrane surface by means of a physical backwash that forces the particulates out of the membrane pores and away from the surface of the membranes. The backwash may occur every 20 minutes to every few hours, depending on the system and the feedwater source. With the system operating in a dead-end mode, operating pressures are generally low (commonly around 10-25 psi), and there is no recirculation stream that would require extra pumping power.

Over time, the physical backwash will not remove some of the membrane fouling. Most membrane systems allow the feed pressure to gradually increase to around 20 - 30 psi and then perform a clean-inplace (CIP). CIP frequency might vary from 7 days to several months. A good target is every one to two months. Another approach is to use a Chemically Enhanced Backwash (CEB), where, on a frequent basis, chemicals are injected with the backwash water to clean the membrane and maintain system performance at low pressure without going off-line for a CIP. CEB chemicals are usually sodium hypochlorite, caustic, or acid. Much of the success of the hollow fiber filtration process is establishing an effective backwash and CEB program.

The backwash and CEB strategy should minimize backwash water losses while effectively returning the trans membrane pressure (TMP) back to where it was at the start of the previous cycle. A good target recovery rate calculated as (filtrate volume/total volume including flushes) × 100, is 92 – 95% with dead-end flow operation.

Flushing and backwash commonly use filtrate water. Sometimes it may be necessary to use other or better water sources for this operation due to fouling that can occur when the filtrate from the machine to be cleaned is not chemically compatible with the CEB chemicals. The flushing and backwash cycles allow the following options:

Cross-Flow
For higher solids waters or back-end treatment of wastewaters, the membrane may be set up to operate in a cross-flow mode. What could be a rapid buildup of solids at the membrane surface is overcome by continuously removing a small portion of the flow from the dirty feedwater side of the membrane. This wastewater along with the water lost in flushes and backwashes can lower the overall recovery rate down to the 80 – 90% range. In both the dead-end flow or the cross-flow, strategies can be incorporated to capture, treat, and reapply the backwash water to the front end of the membrane filtration process to improve actual overall system recovery rate.

Forward flush, backwash, and chemically enhanced backwash strategies are similarly applied whether the system is operated in the dead-end or cross-flow mode.

Figure 2: Dead-End vs. Cross-Flow Filtration

All solids are left behind on the surface.

Solids are removed with a side-stream bleed, and surface fouling is reduced.

Table 1: Starting Point Guidelines

The performance and economics of filtration depend upon the rate at which water flows through the membrane. This is the flux rate and is expressed in gallons per square foot of membrane surface area per day (GFD). The system is set up to operate at a fixed flux rate or filtrate flow rate by the use of a variable frequency drive (VFD) on the supply or feed pump. Any accumulation of retained material at the surface will reduce the effective filtration rate and create the need for higher supply pressure to maintain the set flux rate. Concentration of solids at the surface occurs in a dynamic state but its effect is similar to the filter cake build-up at the separation surface in conventional filtration. The TMP builds and the unit will go into the backwash cleaning cycle. This is established by service cycle time. Excessive TMP must be avoided to prevent damage to the membranes.

Actual desirable flux rates depend upon the membrane manufacturer, flow path, membrane material, water characteristics, and water temperature. Some starting point guidelines are shown in Table 1. The high-end flux rates are for relatively clean feedwaters with turbidities of less than 1 NTU or total suspended solids of less than 1 PPM. The low-end flux rates are for dirtier waters with turbidities of 15 NTU or greater, and total suspended solids of 20 PPM or greater.

Modified-Batch for Hollow Fiber
For oily wastes or relatively dirty back-end waters, the treatment may be set up in a modified-batch treatment. With this method, a batch tank supplies the UF with the cross-flow recycle stream returning to batch tank along with new wastewater. A small concentrate stream is wasted. The flow to the hollow fiber UF module is changed back and forth from top-end feed to bottom-end feed on regular cycles. As one end of the fibers foul, the filtrate actually will provide an online backwash of the fouled end because of the pressure differences created within the module. After a period of time when the TMP builds to a point, a CIP is performed.

Membrane Life
The life expectancy of membranes depends upon many factors including design flux rate, material, water characteristics, operational design and implementation, and cleaning frequency. As a rule, back-end treatment where wastewater contains metals, organics, and oils will reduce the life expectancy.

Table 2: Membrane Life Expectancy (Years)

Filtrate Water Quality
Both UF and MF will remove suspended particles, algae, and bacteria. UF will also remove viruses. Table 3 shows the expected filtrate water quality from MF and UF systems on raw water clarification and compares with multi-media filtration. MF will generally provide a 15- minute silt density index (SDI15) of less than 3 for surface or well waters. UF commonly achieves an SDI15 below 2. The lower SDI indicates a diminished potential for downstream reverse osmosis fouling where an RO machine is part of the treatment process. The removal of suspended solids prevents fouling and blockage of the RO brine spacer. Biofouling of RO membranes will be less likely with the removal of bacteria by a MF or UF membrane process used in front of the RO. Wastewaters containing oils and surfactants and high TOC’s that are filtered by MF or UF will commonly result in higher turbidities and higher SDI’s than surface or well waters.

Table 3. Filtrate Water Quality on Surface or Well Waters

Pilot Testing
Every wastewater is unique to the facility and processes used at the facility. Due to the high variability in the wastewater, it is highly recommended that pilot testing be conducted to verify the treatment process. Pilot testing can be conducted as a lab scale bench top test or as an onsite test with a pilot process that can be scaled up for a full size application. This protects the customer as well as the equipment vendor/contractor by insuring confident results with little or no surprises when the project is completed. The purpose for pilot testing includes the following:

1. Evaluate the effectiveness and reliability of the technology.
2. Determine chemistry requirements, if any, of the UF feedwater.
3. Determine reliable flux rates.
4. Determine necessary backwash frequencies, flow rates, and durations.
5. Determine chemically enhanced backwash strategies (CEB).
6. Develop budgetary costs for full-scale operation.
7. Test CIP effectiveness.

There are many challenges faced with this technology including variations of influent water quality, temperature changes, high TOC water, microbiological effects, and others. Conducting a UF or MF pilot test requires monitoring of several parameters and making effective adjustments to determine if a full-scale system will be effective and to determine how to design it properly.

The pilot system has supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) capability where operating data is automatically acquired and stored. Manual data logging is also advisable to backup the electronically stored data and to check the sensor transmitters.

Case Study
A world-class leader in the production of industrial gases corporation owns and operates air separation units (ASU’s) all over the world. Air separation requires significant quantities of energy and as a result, heat is generated in the process that must be removed. A liquid oxygen ASU that supports a specialty gas pipeline that extends through out the Gulf Coast in Texas was faced with a reduction in the NPDES permitted concentration of copper in their discharge. The facility utilizes two large non-contact cooling systems to reject the heat from the process to atmosphere by utilizing mechanical drift cooling towers. The majority of the piping in the cooling systems is carbon steel and the tube and shell heat exchangers are constructed of carbons steel shells with yellow metal (admiralty brass and copper) tubes.

Makeup water for the facility is sourced from the local river water and canal water supply system. Makeup water is untreated when it arrives at the boundary limit of the facility. The makeup water is high in silt and natural organics. An upflow, fluidized bed, continuous backwashing sand filter is used to filter the makeup water to the non-contact cooling system. Coagulation chemistry is added upstream of the filter to improve the suspended solids removal of the non-contact cooling system makeup. The filtered makeup water is added to the cooling tower sumps based on automatic level control and treatment chemicals are added to the recirculated non-contact cooling water to minimize corrosion, deposition, and microbiological activity. Automatic blowdown of the non-contact cooling water gravity drains to two small retention ponds prior to discharge to the public water way. Average blowdown volume is 100 gallons per minute (GPM).

The Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission (TNRCC) communicated a copper discharge limit of 17 PPB to the facility. The owner of the facility had installed a traditional physical/chemical copper removal system (clarifier/media filtration) at another facility two years prior. Although this system was effective at reducing the copper concentrations to the desired discharge concentrations, it requires a high degree of manpower and chemical addition to operate. Two alternative technologies were compared to the already proven physical/chemical technology to see if a lower cost, better operating system could be used. The two alternative technologies were selective ion exchange and ultrafiltration (UF). Estimates for installed ion exchange and ultrafiltration systems as well as their projected operating costs were compared against the known cost of the existing physical/chemical system. The ultrafiltration system demonstrated the lowest installed cost with the lowest operating costs.

A small-scale pilot study was conducted on the ion exchange strategy and a larger scale pilot study was conducted utilizing the UF technology. The UF pilot was operated for 240 hours at an average flowrate of 18.7 GPM. It was originally thought that by adjusting the non-contact cooling water blowdown to the minimum solubility of copper (9.2 S.U.) that the UF membrane would remove particulate copper and achieve the required copper removal. The pilot demonstrated that this technique resulted in premature fouling of the UF membrane due to carbonate scaling of the membrane caused by exceeding the concentration indices for calcium carbonate. Therefore, trithiocarbonate (TTC) was dosed to the UF feedwater to help precipitate the copper for removal by the UF membrane. This strategy worked very well and allowed a membrane flux rate of 53 GFD to be realized.

The UF membrane utilized for the pilot was a 500 square foot, inside-out, polysulfone ultrafiltration membrane.

After the successful pilot, a full-scale process was specified and awarded as a design/build contract to CROWN Solutions, Inc. The general scope of supply was as follows:

1. A prefabricated metal building to keep. all equipment out of the weather: 30’ × 30’ × 12’ high. Adequate lighting, heat, and ventilation for this building included.
2. An 8” slab with housekeeping pads for all equipment and tanks: 30’ × 30’ × 8” thick. Civil Engineering will be required to determine if this slab is adequate for the ground built on. The Civil Engineering is provided in this scope.
3. All interconnecting piping between Cooling Towers, existing Equalization Tank, all equipment in the building, and the drain to pond #1 located at the northeast corner of the South Cooling Tower is included.
4. All electrical connections to included equipment, 480V to 120V transformer, breakers and electrical distribution equipment, building lights, heat, and vents is included.
5. All associated equipment for the project to include 2 (two) 70 GPM UF Filters, to operate individually or in parallel, all required pumps, clarifier, tanks, chemical feed equipment, control package, softener and CIP system.
6. Project Management and Engineering to supervise the entire construction effort.

The system had the requirements for inlet water quality and was guaranteed to provide the indicated performance. (See Table 4.)

Overall recovery of the process was optimized by directing the backwash from the UF system to a storage tank to allow for additional processing of the backwash through an inclined plate clarifier. The clarified effluent from the inclined plate clarifier was directed back to the UF equalization tank for additional processing by the UF machines. Clarifier sludge was be collected in a filter press and disposed of by the Owner.

Had the economics warranted, a RO process could have been placed downstream of the UF system and the cooling tower blowdown water could have been reclaimed back as to the cooling tower as cooling tower makeup. The process flow for the system is shown in Figure 4.

Table 4: System Requirements

Figure 3: Pilot Hollow Fiber UF System and Pilot Reverse Osmosis System

The case study system has been operational since late 2004. Hurricane Rita caused damage to the facility, which caused it to be shut down for several months while repairs were made. The UF system did not sustain any physical damage as a result of the hurricane and was operational when the facility was placed back in service.

In conclusion, MF and UF systems can be very effective economical processes to meet cooling discharge compliance requirements and provide better results than other treatment methods.

About the Authors

Chris Howell is the Sales Manager and Director of New Business Development, Design/Build Division for CROWN Solutions, Inc. Mr. Howell previously was a senior project engineer and project manager for CROWN. He joined CROWN Solutions in 1993. Prior to that, he was a senior station chemist at the Davis Besse Nuclear Power station and was in the Naval Nuclear Power Program. Mr. Howell holds a university degree in nuclear engineering technology.

Dave Christophersen is a partner in CROWN Solutions, Inc. and is their Technical Support Manager. Mr. Christophersen has been involved in the water treatment industry since 1977 where he worked at Olin Corporation until 1981. He then worked for Betz until 1986 before joining CROWN. Mr. Christophersen is a member of the Association of Water Technologies, the Cooling Technology Institute and the National Association of Corrosion Engineers. Dave has written papers for AWT, NACE, IWC, ULTRAPURE WATER Magazine, and has presented at several conferences.

Figure 4: Process Flow Diagram (Click for larger version)

Figure 5: 2 × 70 GPM Ultrafiltration Skid and Control Panel

Figure 6: WWTP Under Construction