Veolia Water Technologies supports industrial and commercial facilities by providing a wide range of chemical services to help extend the life of utility equipment critical to your operation while avoiding unnecessary downtime.
Utility feed water refers to the water used in boilers and cooling towers. In these applications, it is vitally important that the feed water used is correctly treated to ensure efficiency, maximize boiler and system life, reduce maintenance costs and maintain required levels of operational performance.
Industrial clients and healthcare utilities.
When boiler feed water is heated to produce steam, any dissolved minerals in the water will be deposited on the inside of the boiler. This will significantly reduce the efficiency of a boiler system and require descaling. Corrosion is another potential problem, caused by the reaction of metal components and pipework with dissolved oxygen, carbon dioxide and low pH water. Effective boiler feed water treatment will prevent scaling and corrosion in boilers and cooling towers, maximizing system efficiency, prolonging system life and minimizing maintenance for industrial clients or healthcare utilities.
Effective treatment of utility feed water for boilers and cooling towers provides a number of key benefits:
- Ensures consistent feed water quality from variable raw water sources.
- Prevents or minimizes corrosion, improving energy efficiency.
- Reduces carbon emissions.
- Minimizes the need for treatment chemicals.
- Reduces overall costs.
How Veolia is committed to helping optimize your utility feed water systems
We focus on a customer-specific approach to the development of water treatment programs. It is important for us to understand your requirements and needs when implementing a utility water treatment equipment program. The first step in an effective utility water treatment program begins with understanding not only the water quality in the various utility systems, but also how the water is used throughout the facility. By performing a comprehensive water audit, our specialists will have a detailed mapping of the water cycle in your facility and will be able to objectively make recommendations that meet your operational and business objectives.
Our utility feed water treatment solutions include water clarification, softening, reverse osmosis and deionization. Our in-house engineers are widely experienced in the design, implementation and ongoing support of boiler feed water treatment systems used extensively in a wide range of industries.
When the feed water used in boilers and cooling towers is correctly treated you:
Ensure efficiency
Maximize boiler and system life
Reduce maintenance costs
Maintain required levels of operational performance
Supporting industries to improve utility systems
A leading producer of dairy products, serving over 50% of the US population through three facilities strategically located within the Midwest, has trusted our teams to improve its water management.
Running near capacity and with utility systems in need of attention — inconsistent steam and cooling demand, coupled with rising water treatment costs and poorly operating water treatment equipment — the plant has undergone a comprehensive water audit and gained an understanding of the water problems and their impact on plant operations.
As a result, after 6 months of work, our teams managed to target the main boiler and cooling systems issues and resolve them. Following the changes, immediate improvements were seen in both the boiler and cooling systems, achieving the plant’s overall production and budgetary goals.
Discover our technologies for utility feed water systems
Would you like more information about our technologies for utility feed water?
Chemical water conditioning is key for utilities. The main advantage of using Hydrex Chemical solutions’ is to benefit from the expertise of both experts in chemistry and in industrial processes (boiler and cooling but also RO or effluent treatment), and to know how to preserve the assets while maximizing performance, with chemical use reduced to a minimum.
Etienne Calmels
Technical Director, Hydrex chemical solutions
Veolia Water Technologies
Contact Etienne through his LinkedIn account
More services for utility feed water
FAQ about utility feed water
What are the parameters to take into account for the design of a utility water treatment solution?
There are a lot of parameters that will influence the water treatment strategy :
- Objectives of the water treatment on critical parts of the system (mitigation of corrosion, scaling, biological growth, water savings, energy savings).
- Water system characteristics (power, design details, construction materials).
- Feedwater composition.
- Water system operating conditions (temperature, pressure, cycles of concentration, water flow rates).
- Regulatory constraints (water discharge limits, legionella regulation).
- Health and Safety (chemical handling, etc.).
What is the best way to ensure my utilities are running correctly?
Consult a utility water treatment expert! Even if you are aware of the equipment manufacturer’s water quality recommendations, the feed water chemistry needs to be calculated accurately in order to achieve good results and it is extremely complex. Your water treatment chemical expert will perform a technical study and thoroughly analyze what impurities might be present in the stream. Then the data will be cross-checked with the manufacturer’s asset feed water quality recommendations and it will allow for building a system with all the necessary technologies and chemical programs to ensure the safest and more cost-effective operation possible.
Does my plant really need a utility feedwater treatment ?
If you use an industrial boiler to generate energy with steam, yes you need some kind of boiler feed water treatment asset. But why? Because natural water sources carry impurities which can cause harmful deposits, carryover and corrosion in your boiler system, and also because the higher the pressure your boiler runs at, the purer your water source needs to be.
Technical resources
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