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Case Study
Textile Mill Solves Influent Water Quality
Problems with KlarAid* and PolyFloc*
Clarification Aids and Saves US$240,000
Background
The facility was the world’s largest producer of bath
towels. Raw cotton in - finished goods out. The plant
used 7 million gallons (26.498 m3) of water per day
for production purposes.
The mill’s source of water was a river. All of the water was first treated in their influent clarification
plant. Like any surface water, the river water quality
varied in turbidity and color.
Problem
The plant treated the raw water in the traditional
fashion: alum, clarification, followed by filtration.
The problems were an accumulation of alum
sludge, poor settling of the alum floc, and poor control. A chart summarizing these problems appears
in Figure 2.
Solution
After conducting a system survey, GE recommended an all-organic polymer program to replace the
inorganic alum program. The products of choice
were a KlarAid PC high cationic charge organic coagulant and a PolyFloc AE anionic flocculant.
Figure 1
Results
The new polymer program provided the mill with
turbidity and color levels as good as the previous
treatment program, but without the problems associated with alum. In addition, the new polymer program reduced the sludge handling headaches and
costs, and produced a much faster-settling floc,
which eliminated the solids carryover problem. The
textile mill also had continuous cost savings of
US$240,000/yr.
As part of the updated and improved treatment
program, a GE PaceSetter* was installed to control
polymer feed based on signals from a Streaming
Current Detector and a Flow Proportional Feed system (Figure 1).
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©2013, General Electric Company. All rights reserved.
ch122.doc Mar-13
Problem
Solution
Result
Alum sludge accumulation
Replace alum with an all-organic
polymer program: KlarAid PC and
a. Clean basins once per quarter
PolyFloc AE clarification aids
b. Short circuiting
c. Downtime for cleaning
d. Difficult to dewater and dispose of alum sludge
Reduction in sludge volume
a. Clean basins once per yr
b. Eliminate short circuiting
c. Reduce downtime
d. Easy to dispose and dewater
the sludge
Solids carryover from clarifier
Add a flocculant
a. Short filter runs
b. Softener fouling
c. High water usage for filter
backwash
Better settling
a. Increase filter run length
b. Reduce water usage for backwashing by 50%
c. Eliminate fouling
Poor control
GE PaceSetter with a Streaming Better control
a. Could not react quickly to the Current Detector and Flow Pro- a. Instantaneous reactions to
water quality fluctuations of portional Feed
changes
the river
b. Optimize polymer feed, reb. Periods of poor quality water duced coagulant usage by
undertreatment
undertreatment
c. Coagulant over- or under-feed
Figure 2
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Case Study