Submitted by: Joe Young, wastewater water treatment supervisor, Ecology Management Inc., a business of OK Industries, Fort Smith, Ark. Contact: JYoung@okfoods.com.
We have four blowers that aerate our activated sludge. Three are 100-hp and the other is 150-hp. I was having problems with overheating inside the cabinets, and it was causing all sorts of maintenance problems, including the blowers failing (quite costly at $10,000 to $15,000 per blower).
After observing the cabinets for a few days, I realized that the exhaust fans were failing. We all thought they were going out because of the blower problems, but it was just the opposite. The fans were pulling cooler outside air in past the blowers for cooling purposes. Then it would pull the heated air out of the top of the cabinets. The hot air had to travel over the exhaust fan motors, and the fans could not stand the extreme heat off the blowers.
I had one extra port cut into the top of each of the cabinets, for an extra fan to supply more cool air than the blower demanded. I also had the mounting brackets flipped over. Now the fans push cool air past themselves and through the cabinets, and push the excess hot air out the original intake hole. Basically, we just reversed the path of the airflow. There are no more overheating problems with fans or blowers — and that is a lot better for the budget and the treatment process.
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Tips and Tricks is an occasional feature of TPO in which wastewater operators tell how they took innovative measures to solve problems.
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