Power
Puretec specializes in partnering with heavy industrial plants, offering a focused suite of high purity water services to optimize plant uptime and lower operating costs. With 24/7 support and local trained technicians on the ground, you’re in good hands with Puretec.
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Water is critical to the operation of a power plant. Power plants require water of varying purity for boiler feed, for cooling tower make-up and other plant needs.
An array of equipment and services to meet these needs in a cost effective and efficient manner such as pretreatment and RO systems to treat well, surface, or tertiary treated sources, cooling tower filtration, offsite regeneration services, and mobile ion exchange equipment for final polishing.
Whether your need is planned, such as a steam blow, or caused by a plant upset, Puretec is ready to proactively respond, allowing you to prioritize your focus on power generation.
Boiler Make-Up
The purpose of boiler feedwater (BFW) treatment is to provide high quality clean water for conversion to steam for the generation of power. Proper water treatment is required to avoid damage to the steam generation equipment through either corrosion or scaling.
Boiler feedwater guidelines are defined by the American Boiler Manufacturers Associations (AMBA). In conjunction with these minimum requirements and your feedwater source and quality, Puretec will develop a system that balances equipment needs, optimizes chemical consumption, minimizes wastewater and limits service requirements to manageable levels. These systems typically include filtration, chemical conditioning reverse osmosis treatment of the bulk of the ionic constituents and final polishing using service ion exchange.
Cooling Tower Make-Up
The Power industry uses cooling towers to dissipate heat generated through various plant processes. The most common cooling tower process is called an Open Recirculating system. Air passes through cooling fins at a high rate of speed while hot process water flows downward, cooling the water. Each 10o drop in water temperature results in a 1% loss of cooling water through evaporation. While water evaporates, dissolved minerals and particles collected from the air remain. As the water volume decreases ionic solids concentrate within the tower and can cause scaling related issues with the pumps, pipe and tower fill materials, resulting in loss in operational efficiency and increased operation and maintenance needs. To mitigate this, a portion of the recirculating water is drained, which is known as blowdown, and that volume of water is supplements with Cooling tower make-up water.
The most common form of mineral scale in cooling towers is calcium carbonate. Make-up water is typically softened to reduce calcium hardness. Calcium or magnesium silicate can also be an issue and in some cases may require the application of reverses osmosis treatment of the make-up water to allow the cooling tower to operate at peak efficiency. Puretec evaluates each condition to offer the most efficient and cost-effective solution.
Cooling Tower Side-Stream Filtration
Most cooling towers use ambient air as a cooling medium, with air passing through the downflow cooling water droplets to exchange heat. The ambient air contains dust and dirt particles that are carried down through the tower fill by cooled water droplets and to the below basin. Over time, particulates build up in the basin. This contamination causes a loss in heat transfer efficiency, increases the need for basin chemicals and requires maintenance to remove. Screen-media, multi-media and micro-sand filtration products are design to filter these contaminants by treating a small portion of the tower flow in a side-stream processes.
Steam Blows
During new plant construction, newly assembled steam transfer pipe contains mill scale, slag, and debris from the welding process. Steam blow events are required at startup of any new plant to remove these contaminants, which can damage much of the downstream process, if not removed. These events require a large volume of high-quality purified water in a very short period. Thus, flow demand is very high. Puretec operates an extensive fleet of mobile deionization trailers to meet this critical need.
Off-Site Condensate Polishing
High quality purified water is used as make-up to generate steam which powers the turbines of a power plant. As this steam cools, the condensate is collected and reutilized in the steam processes. The condensate can accumulate ionic contaminants, iron and other materials and it is critical to polish this water source prior to reuse. Many power plants use deep-bed ion exchange towers for this purpose. Regeneration of this resin may be performed on site, and it is critical to avoid cross-contamination of the resin during the separation phase of regeneration. This process requires acid and caustic, manpower, maintenance and generates waste that must be treated prior to disposal.
Highly efficient off-site regeneration services mitigate the need to purchase, store and manage chemicals, reduces manpower requirements, eliminates waste and lowers the customers carbon footprint.
Evolving Power Generation Technologies
High quality clean water is also required in the green hydrogen production process and for rinsing and cleaning of photovoltaic (PV) cells. Puretec provides equipment and ion exchange services to meet the needs of these industries, as well.
Hydrocarbon and Chemical Processing
Billions of gallons of water are consumed every day in Hydrocarbon and Chemical Processing. Whether used for steam production, raw product make-up, cooling water or utility needs, high quality clean water is critical to plant operation, uptime, and yield.
Puretec manufacturers purification equipment designed to operate and last in these demanding environments, with the redundancy you require. In addition, Puretec’s staff of service professionals operates and maintains a fleet of mobile filtration, membrane, and ion exchange treatment equipment to support plant turnarounds and other planned or unplanned shutdowns.
Uptime is critical. Downtime is costly.
Let Puretec keep you in production.
Food, Dairy And Beverage
Without water there would be no food to eat, no beverages to drink. The Food and Beverage industry uses vast amounts of water as ingredient make-up to manufacture consistent, repeatable, safe products in a highly regulated environment. Water is also used for rinsing/cleaning, sanitization, and plant utility needs.
Puretec designs and builds equipment to meet rigid industry standards for material-of-construction, that operate reliably, that offer sophisticated controls, and that meet redundancy needs to maximize production.
Beverage Bottling
Consistent high quality pure water is used as a blending ingredient in the production of milk and beverages such as concentrates, infusions, syrups, and some alcohols and as a finished product in bottled water. This water is also used as a rinsing and sanitizing agent in the packaging process.
Brewery, Winery, Distillery, Water
Like the Beverage Bottling process, consistent high quality pure water is critical to the production of beer, wine, and distilled alcohol products. Color, taste, and odor need to be rigidly controlled to generate consistent products. Minerals, bacteria, and organic substances need to be removed to produce visually pleasing products. These processes must be in place to meet the rigid quality standards required by the industry.
Ice Manufacturing
Purified water is used in ice-making to create clear ice for human consumption as well as recreational ice refrigeration, such as surfacing ice-skating rinks. Water with reduced minerals freezes faster (saving energy), melts slower (reducing production needs – keeping beverages cooler, longer), and lasts longer without cracking. Reverse osmosis equipment is ideal for this process removing only what is necessary to achieve the purification goal.
Pharmaceutical/Biotech
Water is a critical component of the pharmaceutical manufacturing process. High quality purified water is required for ingredient processing, device manufacturing, water for injection, laboratory use and general utility needs. The typical types of water are Water for Injection (WFI), Purified Water, Non-compendial Water and Reagent Grade Water.
Puretec offers membrane, UV and pumping equipment designed to meet stringent United States Pharmacopeia (USP) requirements and provides fleet and dedicated ion exchange resin services managed by a team of qualified service technicians.
Pharmaceutical Production
As defined by USP, purified water and WFI are required in most pharmaceutical production processes. Purified water is typically used for non-sterile products and for cleaning of non-sterile product contact components. WFI is typically used as a dilutant in the production of sterile products. WFI is purified water that has gone through an additional treatment step to remove endotoxins. The use of reverse osmosis membranes to remove endotoxins is considered a Best Available Technology (BAT) for WFI in the United States and ion exchange resin, ultra-violet (UV) sterilization and submicron filtration are typical technologies used in this process.
Medical Device Manufacturing
High quality pure water is used to rinse and clean medical devices. Some devices, such as orthopedic implants, stents, pacemakers come into direct contact with our internal organs and tissues. This rinse water is often called “Critical Water” in the device manufacturing industry. The water quality required is like that of Pharmaceutical Production, with endotoxins being the primary issue to control. Reverse osmosis, ion exchange, UV and submicron filtration are typical technologies used in this process.
Laboratory Water
High quality pure water is utilized in many aspects of the laboratory. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) defines four grades of water quality: Type I, Type II, Type III and Type IV.
Type I water is considered ultrapure and is used in gas chromatography, mass spectrometry and cell culturing, for example. Type II water is of very high quality and is typically used for clinical analyzers, instrument feeds and direct sample dilution. Treatment systems designed to produce Types I and II water are typically RO followed by ion exchange, UV and sub-micron filtration. Types III and IV waters are of lesser quality, but typically processed through an RO system at a minimum.
Cosmetics & Personal Care Products
The Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act defines a cosmetic as any product intended to be rubbed, poured, sprinkled, sprayed or introduced into or otherwise applied to the human body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness or altering appearance.
Water is used as a solvent to dissolve ingredients for use in sprays and as an emulsifier in creams and lotions. While the industry is lightly regulated, most manufacturers in the US follow the USP Purified Water standard for water used in product manufacturing, requiring much of the equipment and process used in other pharmaceutical industries.
Microelectronics
Microelectronics is an ever-evolving industry and ultrapure water (UPW) is critical to achieve the yields required to meet the market demands for complex computers, sophisticated military weaponry and everyday products such as televisions and cell phones. 24/7/365 manufacturing is standard, and downtime is unacceptable.
Puretec has vast experience in the design and manufacturing of UPW systems to meet the stringent requirements of this industry. A typical system may consist of pretreatment, double-pass RO, primary ion exchange and advanced oxidation processes (AOP), polishing ion exchange and ultrafiltration. Materials of construction can include electropolished stainless steel and lubricant free components, butt-weld polypropylene PVDF pipe, viton and Teflon gasketing materials, etc. Our service team has abundant experience in maintenance and upkeep of these critical systems, evolving with the industry since the 70’s.
The manufacturing of semiconductors requires multiple steps to apply transistor and circuit paths on a silicon wafer. In each step, ultrapure water is required to rinse impurities from the wafer surface.
As manufacturing technology gets better and better and the circuitry gets smaller and smaller, water purity becomes extremely critical. Water-quality standards are defined by ASTM as Type E.1, Type E1.1, E1.2 with TOC, silica, boron, and particulate matter of the utmost importance.
Nanotechnology centers are state-of-the-art research facilities typically associated with universities and government entities. In microelectronics, their charter is to advance the technology wave forward, developing new materials and processes at the nanometer scale to further improve circuitry performance and reduce manufacturing costs.
Water purity is critical to this research and typically mirrors the needs of semiconductor manufacturing, thought on a smaller scale.
General Manufacturing
From rinsing and washing of components to cooling of processes to use as a dilution medium in product make-up and for utility use, water is an important component of many general manufacturing processes.
Puretec offers cost-effective pumping and filtration products, membrane technologies and ion exchange and on-site maintenance services to keep you in operation.
Pulp and Paper
The production of pulp and paper requires energy and that requires high quality treated water for use in low, medium, and high-pressure boilers as well as for utility use. Filtered water, soft water, RO water and high purity water systems are found throughout the production process.
Aerospace and Defense
Water is required throughout the manufacturing process of building and assembling components for airplanes, satellites, drones, rockets, and weaponry. Water quality needs vary depending on the need, including rinsing, cooling, plating, and anodizing. The industry is highly regulated by the US Government. Puretec is a trusted partner that understands how to properly navigate “these waters”.
Ingredient Water is used as a diluting agent to manufacture many products
Paints & Coatings
Water is used as a diluting agent when making acrylic paints. In the automotive industry, high quality pure water is critical to the durability, quality, and color of the final product. The industry has developed rigid standards around water quality needs. As an example, lubricant contamination can have detrimental effects on the final paint product. Design and component selection for water treatment equipment manufactured for this industry are critical. Puretec’s team of engineers and assemblers have the experience to meet the needs of this industry.
Battery Water
Batteries consist of a series of electrodes that require an electrolyte for the transfer of energy. In a lead acid batter, the electrolyte is made up of sulfuric acid and deionized water. Deionized water is used both in the manufacturing of electrolyte for new batteries and to replenish the water lost in the battery charging process over time.
Agriculture
We all know that without water, we wouldn’t have food to sustain life. In agriculture, water is used to grow fruits, vegetables, cotton, tobacco, cannabis, and many other plant-based products. In large-scale agriculture, efficient use of water is critical for the environment, and consistent water quality is vital to repeatable production. In some cases, to achieve consistency, well or surface water is treated to RO or deionized water quality and then chemicals and nutrients are reintroduced into the water to generate a recipe to optimize growth of a specific plant.
To grow food requires a large volume of water. And much of the food we grow and consume comes from arid to semi-arid regions in the US. Recycle and recovery of irrigation water, where practical, only makes sense. Water is not an endless resource.
