How Fresh Water Distillers Work
With the increase in fresh water demand and decrease in supply, we have to look more and more towards the sea and other such sources for water. But water from these sources is not directly consumable. Water contains a number of atmospheric and metallic pollutants, which can cause severe threat to your life. A specialized type of water distiller is called the fresh water distiller. These distillers are available for this purpose.
The most common approach of a fresh water distiller is to do a single stage process. In a single stage process, the fresh water distiller generally uses the heat from a diesel engine jacket to heat water and lets it cool down to create drinkable water. An industrial or municipal grade fresh water distiller can have the capacity to process 1 to 100 tons on a daily basis. If installed on a seagoing vessel, a fresh water distiller will provide water for drinking and other purposes for the crew by distilling sea water.
High end fresh water distillers come with meters to monitor salinity and alarms to alert the people in case salinity levels get critical. Running hour meters and chemical dosing units also come as a standard fit for fresh water distillers. They come with titanium plates which act as evaporators and condensers. The water is put in a vacuum container from where distilled water is extracted after processing, using an integral fresh water pump.
Another type of fresh water distiller is the two stage fresh water distiller. This fresh water distiller has three titanium plate packs. They are located in two separate vacuum chambers. Upper plate pack is the stage one of the two stage fresh water pump. It takes water meant to be distilled and evaporates it at 70% vacuum. This steam is now directed to a big diameter pipe. The outlet of this pipe is in the second chamber of the fresh water pump, which has 90% vacuum. This chamber has the third titanium plate pack which acts as a condenser for cooling the steam back to fresh water. Water out of the second chamber of the fresh water distiller flows into a flash tank. From there, it goes into the fresh water pump and finally to the water storage tanks. A two stage fresh water distiller uses the excessive heat from other sources such as when installed on a ship, it uses the excessive heat from the engine of the ship. This fresh water distiller consumes half the amount of energy as compared to a single stage fresh water distiller. Yet it is available in a range of 50 tons daily to 150 tons daily. It provides optimal utilization of heat so it can installed in large passenger liners and off shore oil rigs etc. With incredible advancements in science and technology, the use of water distillers is gaining great scope and strengths.
|