BEKO TECHNOLOGIES have built a business on the back of expertise at compressed air condensate management, that is draining and separation. Today there is much more to BEKO TECHNOLOGIES but the business started with condensates and the issues of efficient draining and legal disposition thereof.
This is not a glamorous business. The BEKO TECHNOLOGIES sales and service staff may hear expressions of pride and satisfaction about a new compressor or the energy saving performance of a dryer or intelligent control system but who ever got excited about his new condensate management system, until there is a problem that is. Chris Norris UK Service Manager at BEKO TECHNOLOGIES says “There are masses of variables, type of compressor oil, environmental contaminants and temperature just to name a few so there are possibilities of failures that need to be considered”
The sad fact is that condensate management is about box ticking. The factory engineer has many issues, things to go wrong, improvements and cost savings and condensate management is something he just has to do, no choice, no major benefit to the way his department runs (of course the benefit is to us all in terms of protecting the environment). So he has purchased and installed a unit and he wants to forget it now. Norris says “Sadly not really possible. Water contains bacteria which cannot be removed by conventional filtration. Bacteria multiply rapidly and under normal conditions 1 bacterial organism per millilitre will grow into more than 1,000,000 colony forming units within one working shift! Bacteria will also produce slime and can produce 100 times their own volume. So it is evident that if unchecked this will become a serious problem. The outcome will be possibly that on some low cost systems that the unit will appear to be working but the filter will be inefficient and condensate with too much oil entrained will go to the drains and contaminate our water resource. Significant fines could be levied too. The other possibility is that the unit will no longer be able to flow the volumes of condensate and will overflow. This is not tolerable but at least the condensate is not reaching the water table and rivers and the engineer has a signal that action has to take place.”
BEKO TECHNOLOGIES have solutions for these scenarios as befits a market leader. When purchasing a condensate management system BEKO TECHNOLOGIES strongly advise users to think about their situation, type of oil, local contaminants will be known and if there are any doubts BEKO TECHNOLOGIES will analyse a sample of condensate as part of the service thus enabling a definitive comment on the type of management system required. It is well known that the printing industry as one example and because of the volatile organic compounds used will not normally have condensates which will separate i.e. they will remain in colloidal suspension. These systems will require a splitting system which introduces a material which will “split” the oil by combining with it and being easily removable in that combination. This is the BEKOSPLIT product which is well proven for difficult condensates over many years.
BEKO TECHNOLOGIES have also developed a system which can overcome the issue of blocking and blinding by forcing flow using a pump system. The Flow control Device uses BEKO TECHNOLOGIES’s proven level sensor technology to measure the condensate level within the OWAMAT. Once the preset level is reached the Flow control unit pumps condensate through the OWAMAT filter and out to drain. The flow control system overcomes the problem of slime blocking the filter sets. This problem of slime will affect all brands of oil and water separators which have the relevant bacteria present in the condensate. BEKO TECHNOLOGIES have seen this on a number of sites with other manufacturers’ equipment. BEKO TECHNOLOGIES have addressed the problem and are the only condensate management manufacturer who has solutions.
For customer who suspect they have problems with condensate system and the law, BEKO TECHNOLOGIES are offering a free site survey to inspect and test condensate systems to ensure customers legal obligations are being met.
