Your cooling tower impacts your facility in more ways than just as a potential health hazard due to Legionella. It also ensures proper atmospheric control and temperature regulation, and it plays a large part in the overall water circulation plan that your building operates on.
However, your cooling tower may be playing a larger part than you realize in your monthly utility bills; if it is not running efficiently, it could be costing you more money than it needs to. Consider the following tips to keep your tower in tip-top shape so that it runs more efficiently than ever.
Tailor Water Treatment To The Location
The water system in your facility—and within the cooling tower itself—is more complicated than just a single pipe. That means that when it comes to water treatment, you should consider the locations of your tower and tailor your strategies appropriately. For example, have you examined what makes up your tower’s feed water? The water that supplies the tower may already be of acceptable quality, but could also have components that need to be addressed preliminarily or post addition to the tower.
After the water enters the tower, it transitions into the circulatory water system, where separate treatment may be useful. Consider physical filtration, which can capture particles that build up as suspended solids in the water over time. Unfiltered, this water will deposit these particles onto important pieces of equipment, leading to scaling and premature repair.
Understand Your System’s Physical Composition
Water—and the chemicals used to treat it—will behave differently depending on the materials of construcion. Thus, understanding the composition of your cooling tower becomes vital. Fiber reinforced polyester (FRP) is becoming more popular in newer towers, but older units may still be constructed using galvanized steel, stainless steel or even fiberglass.
If your pipes are made of plastic, you will need to worry less about corrosion, for example. Understanding the makeup of your tower can help you make smart decisions about your water treatment, which will improve the longevity of your entire system and reduce costs.
Track Your System’s Water Loss
All cooling towers will gradually lose water over time through processes like evaporation, leaking and blowdown. Drift eliminators can help to reduce lost water, which will save you money over time in your utility bills. Similarly, you can make your system more efficient by understanding exactly how much water you are losing from each process in order to identify unusual losses, which can indicate previously unknown leaks.
Stopping a water leak in a cooling tower is often a fairly straightforward process once you know that it is occurring, and preventing this water from escaping keeps your water bill as low as possible and maintains the appropriate levels of treatment chemicals within the water itself.
Pretreat Cooling Tower Water To Reduce Chemical Costs
There are many options for greater efficiency within your chemical usage itself. One of the most important ways to improve your tower’s function and spare your budget is to use chemicals sparingly, because they are costly. In order to work toward this goal, be sure to properly pretreat your water.
Ion exchange and reverse osmosis in the pretreatment phase can reduce the need for chemicals later on, making pipes more resilient against scaling—which is important, because scaling and deposits are some of the most damaging elements in terms of efficiency of your tower.
When the surfaces become thicker due to a buildup of scaling, your unit can no longer transfer heat well. It will take more energy to perform the same task, resulting in higher bills over the long term. Pretreatment can dramatically reduce the effort needed throughout the system by injecting the system with water that has already had many of its problematic elements removed.
Trust The Experts To Help You Improve Your Cooling Tower’s Efficiency
Whether you are unsure where to begin in terms of improving your cooling tower’s efficiency or you need assistance in achieving your goals, be sure to keep a company that you trust on standby for help.
The experts at Tower Water set the standard in water treatment and would be happy to help you understand how a customized plan for your cooling tower can result in lower costs over the long term, as well as enhanced safety. Reach out to schedule an appointment to discuss your options and goals.