Treating water is crucial to the operations of cooling towers, necessary for a number of reasons. Most commonly this process reduces the depletion of water while removing zinc, chromates, and carbonate. Commercial buildings require clean environments, and treating the water is simply a part of maintenance that cannot be ignored.
What Do Cooling Towers Do?
Cooling towers are put in place for the purpose of removing heat from a commercial building, often done by cooling a stream of water with evaporation. While the most common use of a cooling tower is within an HVAC system, that is hardly the only application. A closed loop water system uses a secondary heat exchanger to expel waste heat, while recirculating the same water. Water never evaporates in these systems, and the loss of water is minimal, which means it doesn’t have to be replenished. There are many types of machines, and water treatment cooling for each one is necessary.
Why Is Upkeep Necessary?
With proper upkeep of water treatments, towers can easily run at their maximum heat transfer efficiency. Essentially, the treatment prevents equipment from failing, experiencing too much stress, or creating problems with health and safety. While the size of the cooling tower may vary from place to place, keeping up with general maintenance and cleaning can mean the difference between a comfortable atmosphere and a miserably hot one.
How Is Water Kept Cool?
Keeping the water cool can vary from tower to tower. Open circuit and wet cooling towers are the most popular models, as they are renewable and relatively cost efficient. In these models, the cool air comes from the increase in moisture content and the wet bulb temperature when air passes through the tower. Drift eliminators are used in wet cooling towers to reduce the draft emissions they produce.
The fluid in a closed circuit cooling tower is typically mixed with glycol, which circulates through a coil in the tower. The fluid in this tower is not often exposed to the air, but it can offer better productivity, as scaling doesn’t build up.
Cleaning Commercial Cooling Towers
For the majority of cooling towers, there are a few basic steps that can help maintain this equipment correctly :
– Remove the buildup of scale deposits on the fill several times a year, as minerals can collect over time.
– Check airflow for misalignment, loose components, fan blade damage, or debris.
– Clean mud, slime, algae, scale, etc. out of the chiller tubes to eliminate and prevent clogs.
– Inspect water pump for operational issues, while lubricating pump, motor bearings, and seal.
– Treat the water with either a professional or by using the information here.
By following these steps to keep a cooling tower clean, it will continue to perform at its optimal capacity, improving overall efficiency. There are many solutions available on the market nowadays that make the process of cleaning these water cooling units much easier, breaking down the scale deposits and and other minerals.
Overall, commercial and home units are both easy to tend to and can last a long time, when treated properly. Most of this maintenance can be performed with little difficulty. However, Merus may become necessary without consistently keeping up with maintenance protocols, making this cost-efficient option into a much more expensive problem.
