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CECA Plant (623)
Built: 1951
Decommissioned: 2002
When the Air House and Plant House machines were on compressing duty, they normally drew their
air supply from the atmosphere. However, there was also the option of connecting any of these compressors to an atmospheric air drying plant, and two major
plants were available at Pyestock: the CECA Plant and the Birlec Air Dryer.
The CECA Plant (named after the British Ceca Company Limited) was located to the south-east of the Air House, ideally
situated where it could be connected to the main air supply to the Air House. Piping connections also allowed the CECA Plant to
be used by more distant cells, namely Cells 1 & 2.
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The CECA Plant looking west.
31|03|07 © Simon Cornwell 2007
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The plant consisted of two separate plants which together contained 162 tons of silica gel. The two units operated singularly
or in parallel. This allowed one to be reactivated whilst the other could provide an adsorption service. The reactivation of plant took up to nine hours.
One plant contained two adsorber vessels and the other had one. Each was designed to give a dry air throughput of 200 lb/s so the total amount of dry air available was 600 lb/s.
Other information about the CECA Plant is scant. It's assumed it was constructed at the same time as the Air House and
Cell 3 and shared their decommissioning date.
CECA Plant Walkthrough...
Further Reading
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