Feature
Clark Solutions: 30 years of continuous innovation By: Bruno Ferraro, Victor Machida, and Nelson Clark
This year Clark Solutions celebrated its 30th anniversary. For three decades, the company has been solving complex problems for our industry, developing new technologies and bringing state-of-the-art solutions to customers. This article is a retrospective of what we accomplished and contributed, especially for the sulfuric acid market.
Thirty years of continuous innovation
Nelson Clark Engenharia (NC) was founded in 1991 as the exclusive representative in Brazil and Chile of the former Monsanto Enviro-Chem Systems (MECS) for Sulfuric Acid Products and Technologies. Early in 1992, the company started a successful business relationship with Otto H. York Company Inc., which culminated in 1995 with the licensing to NC of the rights and technology for the manufacture of Otto H. York’s wire mesh mist eliminators. At that time, Clark Solutions was, and still is, one of the very few wire mesh mist eliminator manufacturers in the
Fig. 1: Co-knitted MaxiMesh® model shows the increased surface area.
Fig. 2: MaxiSaddle® (top) and novel MaxiSaddle® BPC ceramic packing. PAGE 32
Southern hemisphere. Wire mesh mist eliminators, invented 1959 by Dr. Otto H. York, consist of a mesh formed by extremely fine-knitted metal fabric that is woven, corrugated, and layered in such a way as to provide a very high surface area and high void fraction. This construction enhances mist elimination by inertial impaction and direct interception of droplets, while the gas easily bypasses the wire obstacles imposing low pressure drop. By the time NC started this manufacture, high-capacity eliminator models were improved by employing geometric changes and multilayer designs with different wire characteristics. Also, co-knitting wires with extremely fine multi-filaments of fiberglass, PTFE, PET, and other thermoplastic or thermoset polymers radically increased particle collection surface area, which, in turn, provided a similar increase in mist elimination efficiency. Wire mesh 100% capture efficiency improved from 10-micron particles to 2-micron particles due to these developments. Today, Clark Solution’s MaxiMesh® is widely used in the sulfuric acid, petroleum, and chemical industries, where its application has provided important lessons learned and technological enhancements to the product’s development. By 1999, NC Engenharia developed the capacity to manufacture ceramic saddles for absorption and drying towers. Mass transfer media also progressed toward more effective contact area and lower pressure drops, two often competing factors. Due to acid concentrations and temperatures in the process, acid-resistant ceramic packing was most commonly used. The packing’s geometric complexity was limited to what is mechanically robust and manufacturable in large-scale. One of the first widely known packing is the cylindric Pall Rings, a geometrical design dating back to 1907. It has seen surface area improvements Lessing Rings and Cross Partition Rings. Other popular ceramic packing is the Berl Saddle from the 1930s, which in the 1950s evolved to saddles, a very successful geometry that became the industry standard for sulfuric acid tower applications. Of course, there were also many improvements to the geometry and ceramic techniques that increased the packed bed efficiency and/or lowered pressure drop. Using a quality controlled automated process, Clark Solutions produces its standard MaxiSaddles® and its very successful MaxiSaddle® BPC line, which is a more open, low pressure drop ceramic packing.
Developed in 2016 and continually optimized since, this model lowers pressure drop by 35-50% compared to standard saddles used to enhance tower capacity. In 1997, Koch Industries acquired Otto H. York Company and its mother company Koch-Glitsch and, in 2003, NC formed a joint venture with Koch-Glitsch to manufacture and improve the line of solutions in mist elimination and mass transfer, creating the company Clark-Koch. At that time, the almost 25 year business relationship with MECS came to an end. The production of fiberglass Brownian diffusion mist eliminators started in 2005. These candle-type filters are mostly applied in drying, absorption, and heat recovery towers, due to the massive presence of fine (<1 µm) mist generated by condensation chemical reaction. To efficiently collect such fine droplets, mechanisms that take advantage of Brownian diffusion phenomena are required. When particles are this small, they follow a random pattern generated by the fluid in which they are suspended. They follow their path until they collide with the glass fibers from the mist eliminators. The grid that holds the fibers can be made of different materials depending on the application. Clark’s candle filter manufacturing started with vast accumulated experience
Fig. 5: Largest sulfuric acid towers in Brazil, by Clark Solutions.
and many improvement ideas that have been implemented over the years. Today, Clark Solutions FiberBed® fully automated manufacturing allows a wide variety of arrangements with unique capabilities such as fiber variable traction (density) control, continuous pressure drop monitoring, and different winding patterns (parallel or angled), along with multiple diameters, heights, and bed thicknesses. In 2018, Clark Solutions introduced an innovative DrySeal™ device that seals the
Fig. 6: Testing high efficiency trough-type acid distributors.
Fig. 3: FiberBed® products can be customized to meet specific requirements.
Fig. 4: Clark Solutions’ innovative DrySeal™
Fig. 7: SAFEHR BFW® heat recovery system. Sulfuric Acid Today • Fall/Winter 2021
