Stabilizing scale in a lime slurry plant

Company: SouthWest Water and Northern Ireland Water, Uk

South West Water is supplying the southwest of England  and  Northern Ireland water is responsible for the whole Northern Ireland.  Here in this actual case we are talking about Crownhill water works. Most water, which is produced or purified by water companies, next to a lot of process steps also the pH-value has to be stabilized, so it fullfills the requested requirements. It is very common to use lime slurry, more or less pure lime scale for this task. Lime slurry is added to the water and so the pH-value gets stabilized.
As to be expected this lime slurry is forming a lot of scale in the pipes and hoses, and are a constant cause of service and cleaning. In order to make things easier very often hoses are used instead of fixed pipes, because they are easier to replace if needed.
The picture to the left shows the cross section of the pipe as it normally looks after a few days of operation. The picture was taken right before the installation of the Merus Ring. The end of the hose app. 180 metre downstream looks the same as at the beginning of the hose. It can be assumed that in the full length of the hose, there are similar fouling conditions found. The Merus Ring was installed direct at the feed valve upstream of the  hose.

This lime slurry is causing a row of technical problems for the water companies. Not only the hoses or pipes and vessels are heavily scaled, but as well the the pumps feeding the lime slurry to the water tanks got scaled a lot. This led to regular break down of the pumps, and service teams have to fix the problem 24/7, all around the year.

After installing Merus, the scale didn't form anymore. As can be seen at the picture to the left the cross section of the hose is totally clean. The company cross checked as well at the end of the 180 meter hose, it looks the same as at the beginning.

The pumps feeding the lime slurry got far less worn down than before. The sealing in the pumps are lasting longer, and there are far less emergency break downs, and so far less maintenance during the weekend or in the middle of the night required.