Equipment Model: Air Cooler

Media: 45% Ethylene Glycol Aqueous Solution

Quantity: 5 Units

Project Description: Five high-specification industrial air coolers were provided for a petrochemical energy project in a Central Asian country, using 45% ethylene glycol as the cooling medium. The project addressed the extremely cold and water-scarce environment of Central Asia by employing a fully dry air-cooled heat exchange technology, achieving zero water consumption operation and completely eliminating the risk of pipeline freezing and cracking in winter, ensuring the continuous and safe operation of this national-level energy corridor.

Situation

Central Asia possesses abundant oil, natural gas, and mineral resources. Its crude oil pressurization stations, natural gas liquefaction plants, and chemical plants are mostly located in desert or remote Gobi regions. These areas face two severe challenges: firstly, extreme water scarcity, making it impossible to supply the evaporative makeup water required by traditional cooling towers; secondly, extremely cold winters, with historical extreme temperatures dropping below -40 degrees Celsius. At such low temperatures, even if a conventional industrial cooling water system is shut down, the pipes will freeze and burst within hours, paralyzing the entire plant. Therefore, this client explicitly required that the newly built process cooling system achieve zero water consumption and absolute freeze protection.

Task

The core task of this project is to ensure uninterrupted and safe cooling of a high-heat-load production line in an anhydrous, extremely cold environment.

• Achieve fully dry heat exchange: The process medium, flowing at a large volume, must be cooled to the target temperature using only ambient air without consuming any water resources.

• Extreme anti-freeze design: While the 45% ethylene glycol solution used in the system can lower the freezing point to approximately -30°C, there is still a risk of freezing under the local extreme cold of -40°C. The air cooler structure must possess strong active insulation or process redundancy to withstand extreme cold.

• Heavy-duty industrial-grade high-pressure vessel standards: The tube bundles of five large air coolers must withstand the high-pressure impact of the petrochemical system and resist high-intensity outdoor wind and sand erosion, placing extremely high demands on welding processes and corrosion resistance.

Standardized Action

Shandong Kaisen Heat Transfer Solutions' expert team meticulously crafted a specialized integrated solution for five industrial air coolers, tailored to the geographical characteristics of this country:

• Pure Air-Cooled Finned Tube Bundle Design: High thermal conductivity aluminum fins are mechanically wound onto seamless steel tubes. The process medium flows inside the tubes, and high-protection fans provide forced convection cooling from bottom to top. The entire heat exchange process is 100% air-cooled, achieving zero water consumption.

• Targeted Extreme Cold Protection System: To prevent cold air invasion, all five air coolers are equipped with automatically adjusting air inlet louvers and an internal hot air circulation structure. When winter temperatures are too low, the louvers automatically reduce their size, and some fans may even reverse, circulating the emitted hot air inside the equipment to ensure that the local temperature of the tube bundle remains above the freezing point of the medium.

• Reinforced Structure and Low-Temperature Resistant Materials: The steel structure, fan blades, motors, and frequency converter control cabinets of the equipment are all made of special low-temperature resistant steel and explosion-proof, low-cold-weather components, ensuring that the machinery will not become brittle, seize up, or the electrical control will not malfunction in an environment of -40 degrees Celsius.

• Digital Intelligent Anti-Freeze Monitoring: Equipped with a remote intelligent management system. The system monitors the inlet and outlet temperatures and pressures of 45% ethylene glycol and the outdoor ambient temperature in real time, automatically calculates the risk of icing, and dynamically adjusts the fan frequency.

Key Achievements

Five heavy-duty industrial air coolers have been successfully put into operation and are operating efficiently at a project site in a Central Asian country:

• Truly Green and Zero Water Consumption: Since the project was put into operation, the cooling system has consumed zero tons of industrial water annually, completely eliminating the resource constraints of water scarcity in the Central Asian desert region, and has won high praise from the customer.

• Perfectly withstood the test of -40°C winter temperatures: During the extreme low temperatures that lasted for months in the local winter, thanks to the multiple protections of ethylene glycol and automatic louvered heated air circulation, the equipment experienced no pipe freezing or localized cracking, ensuring continuous and stable production of the energy plant.

• High-efficiency heat transfer and long lifespan: The optimized pipe arrangement design provides strong resistance to wind and sand impacts, high heat exchange efficiency, and reduces overall system maintenance costs by more than 40% compared to traditional water-cooled systems.

SMART Metrics

5 large industrial air coolers connected to the grid to high standards.

Daily water consumption during project operation is 0%.

Extreme cold tolerance up to -40 degrees Celsius with fault-free operation.

System anti-freeze alarm and freezing/cracking rate is 0%.

Daily maintenance and water costs are reduced by more than 40% compared to traditional water-cooled systems.

Reusability Takeaways

• Waterless dry heat exchange technology: Highly replicable in water-scarce regions globally and in remote mines and pipeline pressurization stations where water sources are unavailable.

• Thermal balance control for heavy equipment in high-altitude and cold regions: Provides a standard industrial model for preventing process media from freezing in extremely cold environments, applicable to similar extremely cold markets such as Siberia and high-latitude North America.

• Precision thermal calculations for special media: Demonstrates Kaisen's top-tier R&D and solution design capabilities in handling non-pure water and non-standard high-viscosity cooling media.