Merus GmbH products

Saudi Aramco is a government owned company and not only known as the world largest producer of oil, but also as the world most valuable company. Also it is common knowledge, Saudi Aramco has the most proven production of oil and oil reserves in the world. With almost 60000 employees Aramco produces out of more then 250 oil and gas fields. Next to the production and transportation of the Oil and Gas, Saudi Aramco operates also a row of refineries, where Riyadh Refinery is one of them. The refinery was commissioned in 1981 and is producing more then 100KBD. The cooling water system has central cooling towers, feeds with a several kilometer long piping network almost 300 heat exchanger and different machines. The total amount of water in the system is around 5.500 m3, the feed water has app. 2000 TDS, the blow down around  5000 TDS.

There are mainly two types of cooling water systems. The so called open cooling water system, is where the water is open against the atmosphere, either in a cooling tower, or by using river- or seawater. Second, the so called closed cooling water system or closed cooling water loop.  The cooling water is cooled by a chiller or another heat exchanging method.

Cooling Systems are not the first part which comes into mind when thinking about processes and machinery. But for sure they often are a crucial part. A cooling liquid is used to cool down a product, process step or even room. Usually it circulates between its "point of use" where it is heated up by the process and a cooling tower to be cooled for example.

In all cooling systems water is circulated by a pump through a pipe system to remove the heat from consumers like heat exchangers or machines. Two different main types of cooling water systems are used. First the so called open cooling water systems, where the water is open against the atmosphere, either the water is cooled in a cooling tower, or by using already cold river- or seawater.

In many parts of the world it is difficult to get access to clean drinking water. Even bore well water needs a lot of treatment before you can drink it unhesitatingly. One reason is the over use of the bore well water. One have to go deeper and deeper to find water and the water holds more and more TDS. Often reverse osmosis systems (RO) are used to filter foreign substances out of the raw water and gain drinking water. In Saudia Arabia our customer runs several RO systems to produce clean water.

In this article we will limit ourselves to water-filled fire suppression systems. There are systems that use gas such as halon or other agents to suppress the fire. Merus is a watertreatment company and we address corrosion in water-based systems.