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CO-CURRENT AND COUNTER-CURRENT REGENERATION COMPARISON

WE OPERATE THE DEMIN PLANT OF 300 m3/hr. OUR ANION EFFLUENT QUALITY IS, SILICA LESS THAN 10 ppb AND CONDUCTIVITY 3-4 microsiemens. CURRENTLY WE ARE REGENERATING THE ANION IN CO-CURRENT WAY. WE WANT TO SWITCH OVER TO COUNTER-CURRENT REGENERATION. WILL IT FURTHER IMPROVE THE WATER QUALITY? PLEASE EXPLAIN, HOW MUCH EFFICIENT IS THE COUNTER-CURRENT REGENERATION PROCESS COMPARED WITH THE CO-CURRENT (PLEASE GIVE THE COMPARISON IN REGENERANT SAVING AND SERVICE RUN).

QAISER MAHMOOD
FERTILIZER COMPANY - SADIQ ABAD, Punjab, PAKISTAN
2003

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The advantages of counter current regeneration are unquestionable. You may expect extension of capacity up to 10%, reduction of use of chemicals up to 40 % and increase of product quality up to 80%. Also use of water for regeneration is lower and thus amount of waste is lower as well.
Jerry

Jerry SIMIK
- Guelph, Canada
2003

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2003

The benefits can be substantial. In addition to less water usage, you should also be able to reduce chemical usage. We typically use only 4-5 lbs of sodium hydroxide per cubic foot of strong base anion resin for countercurrent operation and achieve very low silica leakage.

For best results, a deep resin bed (>30" of resin)is used, and DI water is used for diluting the sodium hydroxide and for rinsing, with a final downflow recycled rinse of decationized water. Similar benefits are obtained by operating the cation exchanger in a countercurrent mode. Your ion exchange resin supplier should be able to give you more information on the savings and the quality improvements that you can expect to achieve.

Lyle Kirman
consultant - Cleveland Heights, Ohio

I want to know is counter current regeneration possible in WBA?

Rohan Sarin
- Lucknow, U.P., India
March 24, 2009