Case Study: Rhodia - Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Phase 1 - GEA was hired to tear down and rebuild an existing 2-cell wood crossflow tower during a 12-day plant outage. The old tower could collapse at any moment and was in such a precarious state that temporary scaffolding was supporting the top section of the tower. In addition, the nearby pump structure and pipe racks could not be damaged during demolition. Within the existing basin, GEA installed a 2-cell film filled counterflow tower with a fiberglass structure. The entire project was successfully completed during the 12-day outage.

Phase 2 - Following successful commissioning of phase 1, Rhodia constructed a concrete tray type foundation adjacent to the new tower on which GEA erected a 3rd identical cell to provide the plant with additional cooling capacity. This 3rd cell was erected when the adjacent tower was operating at full load.

There were no changes necessary to the original pumping system and the work was completed within a planned outage. Most importantly, the plant's production was not impacted. After the tower was completed it was tested at 106% of the guaranteed design.

This 3-cell Cooling Tower meets or exceeds the following requirements:

Design Duty:
- 34,000 gpm
- 111.0ºF hot water
- 89.0ºF cold water
- 81.0ºF inlet wet bulb
Thermal Performance - The tower was tested at over 100% of design.
Completed demolition of the existing tower without damage to surrounding equipment.
Successfully rebuilt the tower during a previously planned 12-day outage.
Completed all of the work without impacting plant production.

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