A large brewery in the western US set up a brand-new ammonia cooling process at their facility. The ChemTreat team implemented CTVista+ water management software to connect data inputs from ChemTreat controllers across the brewery’s eight evaporative condensers and a cooling tower to monitor inhibitor feed, conductivity, pH, temperature, and flow. The controllers send alarms to the local ChemTreat team via our CTVista+ software whenever monitored parameters are out of range.
On a Saturday evening, the ChemTreat representative received an alarm from the CTVista+ software, alerting a sudden temperature spike from the usual 65°F to 95°F in all eight condensers.
Trend chart showing the temperature spike on one of eight condensers
The Solution
The ChemTreat representative immediately informed facility management of the temperature increase. Although on-site staff had detected the issue independently of the alarm, because this was a brand-new ammonia cooling process, the communication process had not been well-defined.
Plant staff explained that communication had been lost with one of the evaporative condensers because a communications breaker had been tripped.
Thanks to the controller alarms and CTVista+ data collection, ChemTreat was able to keep management informed so the customer could quickly determine a course of action.
The Results
The communications breaker was increased from 1.0 to 3.0 amperes to resolve the issue.
This problem could have caused a plant shutdown if it was not spotted and resolved quickly. Thanks to the alert the ChemTreat team received from CTVista+, facility management was made aware of the problem and able to troubleshoot and put preventative measures in place.
