When carrying out refining processes, large quantities of heat have to be removed. High-grade heat can be reused for product-to-product heat transfers, but low grade heat is invariably discarded. In this refinery, we used air cooled heat exchangers (fin-fan coolers) to discard low grade heat. Final cooling to ambient temperature was sometimes required after the air cooling. We used sea-water coolers for this purpose. A Public Utility Company supplied the cold sea water. Once used in the coolers, the warm cooling water was returned to the sea. The Utility Company provided elevated concrete supply and return channels, and we had to pump the warm water up about 30 feet. We had three large vertical cooling water pumps to pump out the warm water. Two of these were needed to cope with the volume involved, while the third served as a spare unit.

A concrete channel was used to transport the water from the process plants to the pump-house. This was about 12 feet wide and 10 feet deep, with the top (covered with removable slabs), about 6" above ground level. From the channel, water flowed into an open concrete reservoir through an inverted weir. There was a 'waterfall' effect, as the drop was about 12 feet. This caused a lot of turbulence, and there was plenty of 'white water' in the reservoir.

The pumps'...