cooling compressor

[nbengineer]

Hello everybody, I am new here, and at my work we have a problem with cooling a compressor. Well we already have a compressor that is being cooled by the river, and it has been running for 10 yrs now. What happened is that because the water is not treated, we opened up the compressor, and there was rust everywhere, and holes too. Anyways we are buying a new compressor similar to this one and we are going to install it to work as lead/lag system. Now I do not want the new compressor to rust like the old one we already have. The supervisior wants to install a glycol system to cool down the compressors, well I am against this idea since it costs us money to install this new system, and will it be as effective as the water cooling.?
We have a water softener that is installed in the station that we can run the river water through and cool the compressors. The problem with the water softener is that the resin is old and needs replacing, now will it be expensive to replace the resin?
It all comes down to that is better to install the glycol cooling system or invest in the water softener to cool down the compressors?

Thanks you for your time.

 

[dcasto]

A closed cooling system with inhibited water and EG or PG is worth the money. You could use an air cooler to cool the EG/PG or use the river water to cool it. However, I don't think leaking RG/PG would very environmentally friendly so the water to EG/PG cooler should be designed to handle the corrosive water. I'd stick with the air cooler.

You may not even have to circulate water, I've just filled up the compressor cylinders with EG an just let the system thermal syphon to a high tank.

Are you using the water to also after cool the gas being compressed? That's a different issue.