Matt Hale

 

There is a lot of truth to the old saying ‘seeing is believing’. There’s nothing like seeing the results with your own eyes in order to tell whether or not a trial has been successful—if new equipment delivers everything that you hoped for or if changes to production have delivered the expected improvements in quality. Trials are also invaluable for assessing product quality parameters, testing system designs and environmental performance, consumer research, or producing samples for chemical or microbial analysis, or even assessing the feasibility of a particular process.

Due to the complexity of modern waste treatment and environmental processes, it can be hard to assess multiple options and the processing of small batches. A range of portable and trial units have been developed, which allow clients to test a variety of equipment including tubular and scraped surface heat exchangers and pilot evaporation plants.

download-3

Trialing Treatment Techniques
If you already have a successful treatment process, making changes can provide cost savings or other financial and environmental improvements; however, it is not without risks. Before making wholesale changes—for example, altering the temperature and time regimes for an evaporation process—it can be reassuring to find out what the effect on both the end material and the overall process will be. After all, nobody wants to invest in major changes to production equipment which then have to be reversed due to adverse environmental outcomes.

One way to do this with heat exchangers is with a trial unit for in situ testing of equipment, or by performing trials and analysis on materials and waste streams at the client’s own facility. These types of trial not only help to inform the design of the heat exchanger, but also provide buyers and users with the confidence to invest in, and install, new equipment.

General Advantages of Trialing Products
In today’s competitive market, companies, their clients and consumers are all looking for the next trend. However, the environmental performance of businesses is now often as important as its products themselves and so staying up to date with the latest waste treatment techniques and infrastructure is crucial.

In some markets, trials are required for process to be approved prior to licensing; for example, where wastewater streams are discharged to the environment. Trials also allow potential treatment issues or glitches to be identified and rectified before investing in a full-size facility and can even inform assessments such as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) before full-scale installation.

Equipment to Facilitate In-House Trials
Buying dedicated equipment for trials can be prohibitively expensive. However, good equipment which is flexible enough to be used for a wide variety of trial and production purposes can quickly repay the initial investment. To facilitate this type of trial, HRS has produced a range of trial-size equipment with the reliability and performance of their full-size counterparts, but which have been specifically designed to be easily portable between sites.download-2

The modular nature of many HRS heat exchangers means that we can also provide trial units of many of our heat exchanger models. Recent examples include using trial versions of the HRS R Series of scraped surface heat exchangers. In each case mounting the trial heat exchanger and relevant controls on pallets or a purpose-designed suitable skid frame not only aids delivery and installation of the equipment, but makes it easier to move around production facilities, for example to investigate the use of different lines and possible installation locations.

Evaporation is often a key part of waste stream processing and HRS has trial evaporator units available which can be configured for a wide range of waste treatment applications. Investing in any new processing equipment not only represents a significant capital outlay, but results in inevitable disruption during installation, however by trialing equipment prior to investment both users and manufacturers can be sure that the best solution has been chosen.

Matt Hale is International Sales and Marketing Director for HRS Heat Exchangers.Located in Atlanta, GA, HRS Heat Exchangers is part of the HRS Group which operates at the forefront of thermal technology, offering innovative heat transfer solutions worldwide across a diverse range of industries. With approaching 40 years’ experience in the wastesector, specializing in the design and manufacture of an extensive range of turnkey systems and components, incorporating our corrugated tubular and scraped surface heat exchanger technology, HRS units are compliant with global design and industry standards. HRS has a network of offices throughout the world: Australia, New Zealand, UK, Spain, USA, Malaysia and India; with manufacturing plants in the UK, India and Spain. For more information, call(770) 726 3540 or e-mail [email protected].

Sponsor