New water jacket design enables seawater cooling
1 min read
A new design of composite water jacket that enables seawater to be used to cool tensioning brakes has enabled Wichita Clutch, an Altra Industrial Motion company, to revolutionise the operation of marine-duty water cooled clutches and brakes used for tensioning on offshore oil and gas platforms and in other heavy-duty applications.
The new composite design enables Wichita's AquaMaKKs clutches and brakes to be cooled either with salt water, or water with high acidic PH levels. Prior to its development, the industry standard was to use cast iron water jackets, alternating with copper wear plates, to dissipate the high heat generated in heavy-duty tensioning applications. In marine environments, however, salt corrosion created maintenance issues that necessitated too-frequent repair or replacement of the cast iron water jackets.
Altra's Mark Stuebe said: "The patented water jacket flow design provides a balanced water flow in the water jacket to efficiently remove heat being generated by the friction materials running against the copper alloy. The balanced flow is designed to match the heat being generated on a swept area in a multi-plate. What this means to a user is that a Wichita water-cooled unit can absorb more heat than a comparable competitive unit when it's supplied with sufficient cooling water."
Stuebe went on: "Results have been good in the field. We've seen only positive performance differences. The real advantages will show in a few years when the iron water jackets would typically need to be refurbished or replaced due to corrosion. The composite water jackets won't have any corrosion and will most likely remain in service."
