Cooling Tower Filtration Systems Reduce Water Consumption, Maintenance

by | Nov 21, 2014

This article is included in these additional categories:

Cooling tower efficiency can be easily maintained by installing the right filtration system, according to Industrial Water Cooling, which makes industrial water filtration and screening equipment.

The company says keeping process-water clean is essential to maximizing the efficiency and performance of an industrial cooling system.

Dirty process water clogs cooling tower and other heat exchange equipment, reducing heat transfer efficiency, driving up energy costs and leads to unnecessary water wastage. In addition, unclean water can lead to the growth of microbes such as the deadly Legionella bacteria.

Evaporative cooling towers dissipate unwanted heat through water evaporation. When water evaporates from the tower, dissolved solids (such as calcium, magnesium, chloride and silica) are left behind. As more water evaporates, the concentration of dissolved solids increases.

If the concentration reaches a level higher than the saturation point of the cooling tower, the solids cause scale to form within the system, which eventually corrodes the process equipment, leading to reduced system efficiency and the need to replace system parts more frequently. A high concentration of solids can also lead to the growth of microbes, including the Legionella bacteria, which causes Legionnaires’ disease.

To reduce the build-up of dissolved solids, the cooling tower’s process water is flushed out (blowdown) and replaced with fresh water, known as make-up water.

In addition to controlled blowdown, the water is also chemically treated to reduce biological growth as well as reduce corrosion and scale formation. Used alone, these methods can lead to high water wastage and pollution as the treatment chemicals are released into the environment through cooling tower drift loss (small water droplets discharged from the top of the cooling tower).

Full flow and side stream filters are two of the most common filtration systems used in cooling towers. In a full flow system, the filter must be sized in order to handle the system’s design recirculation rate and then installed during cooling tower installation, on the discharge side of the pump. A full flow filter continuously cleans all of the recirculating water.

Side stream sand filters are a cheaper alternative to full flow and work by directing water through a bed of graded filter media, usually made up of compounds such as silica, anthracite or garnet. Side stream filters are often the preferred choice for many cooling systems due to the fact that they can be installed on an operational cooling tower and they can be cleaned while the cooling system remains online, avoiding the need for downtime.

US commercial buildings can collectively save up to 28 billion gallons of water annually by using a suit of tools produced by AT&T and Environmental Defense Fund, the organizations say.

For example, buildings with cooling towers typically use 28 percent of their daily water for cooling. AT&T and EDF say the toolkit can help these building reduce that water demand by 14 percent to 40 percent.

 

Additional articles you will be interested in.

Stay Informed

Get E+E Leader Articles delivered via Newsletter right to your inbox!

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Share This