Water Testing

Why is Industrial Water Testing Necessary?

1. In general, different refinery processes require different properties of water:

• Chilled water should generally be able to resist corrosion and reduce the formation of organic sludge and sediment.
  Circulating water systems often have problems with fouling and corrosion without chemical treatment. Boiler and cooling water, for example, are treated with amines to neutralize acidic build-up that can damage the facility.
• Boiler feed water makeup requires high quality water to prevent excessive corrosion and scale formation. Although modern systems may not even require annual cleaning, it is important to check for impurities in boiler water to ensure that it produces satisfactory results.
• Like other power plants, refinery power plants are required to monitor ionic impurities in various water streams, such as boiler water, cooling water, feed water, and condensate water. By understanding the level of contamination, facility operators can take action to reduce damage from corrosion, deposition and scaling. Therefore, industrial water testing is essential for quality control and process optimization in the refinery.

2. Monitoring of ionic impurity in various water streams may include:

•  trace sodium and transition metals
• Detect ions in high purity water
• chloride and sulfate

3. These ions and cations can be analyzed by modern ion chromatography (IC) techniques, addressing a number of challenges including:

Detection of trace levels of analyte (eg sodium) in the background of high ionic-strength matrices (amines). Thanks to the development of high-capacity cation-exchange columns, this challenge has been reduced.
Preconcentration of a sample when trace ions (less µg/L) are quantified. Preconcentration requires additional hardware such as a concentration column and pump, and takes additional time. Using gradient separation, trace ions can be analyzed with direct injection.