Requirement
Removal and refurbishment of the fallen fill and existing support wires from the cooling tower basin. The removal and replacement of the two fallen concrete beams, replacement/repairing of all damaged concrete structural elements, replacement of damaged wind baffles, cleaning and removal of debris from the screens in the pump suction during the execution of the project and installing new replacement splash grid fill.
Solution
For this project the use of a pontoon raft system was proposed. No references could be found to demonstrate that this has been successfully done to this order of magnitude i.e. scaffold height and area. Industrial Water Cooling, together with their Client, decided to undertake testing to establish the viability of the proposed pontoon raft at the required scaffold height and imposed loading.
The 20% portion of the cooling tower to be isolated was split into two discreet sections (10% of the tower area) and a pontoon raft built to cover the area. The pontoon raft was used as the base for construction of scaffolding and proved to be a safe and cost-effective method for obtaining access to the cooling tower internals.
In a previous refurbishment project isolation, valves were fitted to the distribution system. This made use of Industrial Water Cooling’s patented isolation methodology and the valves installed were used to isolate the areas needed to allow the refurbishment process to continue.
With the fill replacement complete, the re-cooled water temperature from the cooling tower was successfully reduced to a level close to the design point. Some critical design modifications were made to the fill design to reduce the impact of any potential failures in the future. All in all, a very successful project with great learnings and outcomes thanks to teamwork and partnership with our Client.
