Individual Cooling Tower Isolation

Hickman, Arkansas

Berenyi Incorporated was tasked by Nucor with designing a means by which any one of three cooling towers serving the Hot Mill could be isolated for repair and/or maintenance while allowing the other two to continue serving the operating process. Two C/T’s basins were connected by a large concrete channel, and the third C/T’s basin was connected to the midpoint of this channel by a 42” steel pipe. This C/T could already be isolated by a butterfly valve in its 42” pipe, but the connecting channel was open between the two other C/T’s basins. Berenyi designed two new dams across this existing concrete channel, with two large butterfly valves in each one. This allowed all 3 C/T’s to be individually isolated. One of the two connected basins lacked an overflow apparatus, so Berenyi designed a weir and drain pipe at a point along the top edge of the basin to capture overflow and route the water back to the melt shop hot well. This project was recently completed in September 2011.