NaOH dosing system (KEMIN)
The customer
KEMIN focuses on the development and production of ingredients that enhance the health of humans and animals (including additives for animal feed). Or as they put it in their mission statement: "We strive to sustainably transform the quality of life every day for 80% of the world with our products and services".
Purpose
Installation of a new NaOH tank at the facility in Herentals.
Problem-solution
Due to changes in legislation, a certain product could no longer be used in the process. As an alternative, a new NaOH tank including a pump enclosure, needed to be installed.
- The concentration in the tank is 50% NaOH. To prevent crystallization and clogging of the pipes, the product's temperature must never drop below 20°C. For this reason, the entire system was equipped with tracing and insulation. The pump enclosure, pumps, and other components are also heated. The pump enclosure was even constructed with a double wall to operate energy-efficiently. In total, we installed 50 meters of piping, all traced and insulated.
- NaOH dosing is carried out on tanks with load cells. The endpoint was connected with suitable flexible hoses to ensure that it does not affect the weighing.
With this new installation, the client fully complies with the revised legislation.
In addition, we minimized the chance of production downtime:
- Earlier in the year, our team performed an urgent intervention due to a defect in the existing tracing cable. As a result, the fill line had completely crystallized, causing a halt in new supply and risking production downtime.
- During the urgent intervention, we ensured that the 50-meter fill line could be reactivated.
- To avoid such situations in the future, we installed a new fill line in parallel and connected it to the existing system. This provides an additional fill line in case of crystallization in the piping.
- We also equipped both lines with a coupling for flushing with warm water to prevent crystallization build-up.
Our team was responsible for:
- Designing and supplying the double-walled heated pump enclosure and installing it
- Heating elements and tracing
- Valves and instrumentation
- Fill station with a PBM hatch (for connecting the tank truck)
- Piping and supports
- Insulating the pipes
To maximize on-site working hours (instead of being stuck in traffic), our team stayed in the Herentals region from Monday to Friday during the project.
