Walter Meier’s Defensor Mk5 incorporates an innovative and patented solution to the problems of limescale formation commonly associated with electric steam humidifiers – thus increasing plant life and reducing cost of ownership.

When electric steam humidifiers are used with tap water in hard water areas there are almost inevitably problems with limescale formation, resulting in reduced performance and higher maintenance costs. This performance reduction is difficult to quantify but one source says that 3mm of lime scale on heating plates can reduce the performance by 25%. This means the steam boiler must work longer and harder to produce the desired output.

An alternative is to use demineralised water but this transfers the cost to the water usage bill to accommodate the flushing requirement of the reverse osmosis plant

“Our Defensor Mk5 takes a different approach, using a unique scale management system,” explains Roger Palamarczuk, Walter Meier's humidification manager for Defensor and Condair products. “It incorporates a patented cold water zone to ensure that water temperatures in key areas remain below the 55ºC temperature where scale starts to form. This is combined with a special pulsing mechanism that is used to keep the heating elements free of scale,” he added.

“The Defensor Mk5 is just one of a range of innovative isothermal and adiabatic humidification products offered by Walter Meier, and we are currently actively looking for companies to join our growing network of agents for these products in the UK ,” he continued.

Mk5's patented scale management

Incoming water used to replenish the evaporated water cools down the cylinder surface which is covered by a specially designed plastic insert. This prevents deposits of minerals and scale by creating a debris of small solids that fall down into the scale collection tank.

In the case of the heating elements, which clearly have to exceed temperatures of 55ºC, a special electronic design ‘pulses' the elements at a high frequency causing them to alternately expand and contract so that scale breaks off and falls into the scale collection tank.

Consequently, the Mk5 can be used with tap water, without incurring the high operating and maintenance costs imposed by traditional electric steam humidifiers.

Enhanced control

Capable of generating between 5 and 80kg/h of steam, with either demineralised or tap water, the Mk5 also incorporates enhanced control features so that the required humidity can be set at 48%, 72% or 97% at the touch of a button. It is also compatible with Modbus Standard, BACnet or LonWorks protocols and accepts all common control signal levels for improved monitoring and regulation. The addition of e-Links allows Data Exchange, Alarm and Event Management, Data capture for trend evaluation, Scheduling maintenance Intervals and Networking of up to eight units.

Roger Palamarczuk
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