December, 2019

Petrochemical success – IWC’s latest natural draft cooling tower refurbishment

Industrial Water Cooling (IWC) is deemed by many to be Africa’s leading cooling tower specialist. To date, IWC has completed approximately 80% of all the natural draft cooling tower refurbishments in southern Africa.

More recently, IWC completed an online natural draft cooling tower refurbishment for a very large, local petrochemical plant. The scope of work included the replacement of all the splash grids and stainless-steel hangar wires in the cooling tower.

At a glance

The project entailed replacing 220 000 splash grids with a total weight of 220 tons along with approximately 14 tons of new stainless-steel hangar wires. These were installed at an average of 2500 splash grids per day with a project record of 4 000 splash grids being installed in a single day.

In order to fit the splash grids, the project required a large amount of scaffolding to be moved daily – a total of 1800 tons of scaffold was installed and removed during the duration of the project, with an average of 30 to 40 tons of scaffolding moved daily and a project record of 57 tons being moved in a single day. The project was completed in 304 days with a ‘no recordable case’ safety record of 437 486 hours by the 160 employees on-site.

Expert asbestos removal

IWC has an impressive and extensive natural draft cooling tower refurbishment reference list with most projects stemming mainly from the power generation and petrochemical industries. Over and above cooling tower refurbishment, IWC is a certified asbestos contractor which means that all asbestos work associated with these projects is both managed and completed in-house as per the Asbestos Regulations Act [2001]. Despite the severity of asbestos-related health and safety issues, the material has extremely widespread use in many areas, one of which is as cooling tower components for fill, drift eliminators and distribution piping. A number of cooling towers, both natural draught and mechanical draught, in operation today still make use of asbestos products which will at some point need to be removed and disposed of. Removing asbestos has to be completed by qualified professionals like IWC within responsible and regulated parameters.

Why IWC?

IWC engineers world class thermal solutions for all cooling tower and heat exchanger needs. From natural draught cooling tower refurbishment to asbestos removal, it’s easy to see why IWC remains Africa’s leading cooling tower specialist. Backed by industry expertise, IWC invests significantly in research and development and holds a CIDB ME8 grading, is ISO accredited and trades at a BBBEE level 3.