Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Res-Kem Loses $70,000 Water System Equipment Job

Our service group so successfully helped a food manufacturing company they no longer needed the new system we had quoted for about $70,000!

The System:
Customer has an older dual, 40 cubic foot parallel operating nitrate system required for manufacturing their food products. The normal flow rate is 80 to 85 gpm. The estimated age of the system 15 to 20 years, resin was in service for 10 years but was recently tested and found to be in shape to run another 6 to 12 months. They were in the process of gathering quotes for replacement equipment because they were experiencing low flow, 20 to 30 gpm, reason unknown, from unit #1.

The Problem:
On Tuesday, June 1, the #1 unit failed reducing the product flow to 5 to 10 gpm. As stated above, the normal flow rate is 80 to 85 gpm in a properly operating unit. We were contacted to see if we could service the unit but they could not be down longer than 12 hours due to production demand. They had no information on the system so we didn’t know what type of internals were in the vessel, but believed they were manufactured of black iron.

The Solution:
Res-Kem came on Wednesday, June 2 with two of our installation technicians to service the nitrate removal system. They vacuumed all the resin, gravel support bed but also encountered either anthracite or activated carbon. The internals were found to be manufactured of Schedule 80 PVC and in good condition. One of the technicians backwashed the system prior to refilling the tank and found no blockage within the distributors.

The new resin, Purolite A-520E, was picked up at Purolite by our Res-Kem truck and delivered to the customer the same day of the service. The customer and Res-Kem technicians decided to refill the tank and place it back into service. This was done and the system was operating at 85 gpm.

Start time 8:30AM – Completion 2:00PM
Would have been sooner but they had to bucket the resin into the tank because we could only get a super sack of resin from the manufacturer, due to the urgency, and they had no water pressure to educt the resin into the vessel.

The Bottomline:
They are thrilled with the service and limited downtime and we are now doing the #2 unit, but they are delaying the purchase of the replacement system.

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