Industry Requires Creative Fabrication Innovations

BIC Magazine – View Original Post 

For the energy and chemicals industry, innovation means creating custom solutions that bring efficiency, reliability and better outputs.

Woven Metal Products’ (WMP’s) customers are making a big global impact, producing some of the world’s primary fuel sources and creating chemicals that are the building blocks of everything from plastic products to fertilizer.

Our team has worked closely with our partners and customers to innovate and develop new products and designs. Here are a few of the innovations we’ve created and patented in recent years.

Outlet Support Grids are custom-made for each reactor, making install fast and simple through the existing manway.

Outlet Support Grid

Our goal with the Outlet Support Grid (OSG) was to obtain a lower pressure drop in an axial flow reactor, decreasing energy consumption and increasing production. In partnership with Haldor Topsoe, we debuted our patented design that has reduced customers’ operating costs.

Compared to traditional support grids or standard outlets, this OSG can achieve a decrease in pressure drop up to 75 percent over a conventional system.

Woven Metal Products’ tray deck repair washer makes repairs possible by just one crew member versus an entire team.

Tray deck repair washer

Over time, aging plants have equipment problems and during outage inspections, they often have to rush order tower tray panels with replacement valves — or risk a longer downtime. After continually seeing this issue among customers, our team designed a tray deck repair washer that could bend into the existing enlarged tray panel holes, allowing for a quicker, simpler fix. We patented this time- and money-saving solution in 2016.

The scallop support distributor strengthens the scallop from within.

Scallop support distributor for radial flow reactor

Conventional scallops are used in radial flow reactors and function as conduits for gases to flow inside the reactor. When materials flow through the scallop and escape through the openings inside, they come into contact with catalyst particles and cause a reaction.

However, conventional scallop designs are prone to damage from operational issues, often being crushed or bent, preventing a proper reaction with the catalyst. That’s why we designed our scallop support distributor, patented in 2020, to improve the support structure from within and reduce crushing.

Woven Metal Products’ scallop optimization, in concert with the center pipe, optimizes catalytic reactions in radial flow reactors.

Systems, methods for improving flow in radial flow reactors

With radial flow reactors, it’s important to optimize catalytic reactions to get the most effective outputs in processes. By varying scallop slot sizes and patterns as well as the center pipe’s perforation sizes and patterns, we can regulate and fine tune these reactions. Working with Axens, we developed and patented a process condition optimization method between scallops and center pipes to optimize the amount of flow through the internals, creating better operating conditions and lengthening catalyst life.

These four designs are some of the ways we’ve partnered with our customers, helping them solve challenges and design the tools they need. With our fabrication expertise, we can design and customize to any specification, meeting or exceeding fabrication industry tolerance standards.

For more information, visit www.wovenmetal.com or call (281) 331-4466.