The Müller & Hayer Company hardening plant uses modern systems and cutting edge technology. The company can provide the optimal heat treatment for specialized customer needs.

Problem description

The furnaces used for metal hardening have special cooling requirements due to the extreme temperatures involved in the processes. Since the water between the Swabian Alb and the Black Forest is very hard to extremely hard, problems are to be expected when using it as cooling water.

Every three or sometimes even every two months the machines' cooling pipes are so badly affected by lime scale that they close up entirely, and it is no longer possible to cool the furnaces.

With the extremely high temperatures involved, the system needs to cool down for two days before the pipes can be descaled with acid.

Proposed solution

Müller & Hayer approached us with this problem. We decided to carry out a trial run. In July 2009 an AquaKat XXL was installed on the central cooling water manifold and one AquaKat XL each on the most affected furnaces.

Result

Since the installation of the AquaKats, it has not been necessary to descale the systems once!

It is also worth noting that the cooling pipe system was not descaled or cleaned immediately prior to the installation and that therefore we had no exact information about the condition (limescale deposits) of the pipes when we installed the AquaKats.

Even after one year, all furnaces are operating at capacity and the cooling system is working perfectly!