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Cooling Tower Cleaning

Cooling Tower Cleaning

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Cooling Tower Cleaning

Approximately 90% of industrial applications processes need to be cooled. The two most common cooling methods used are air and water.

​Cooling towers are heat rejection devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to reject process heat and cool the working fluid, to near the wet-bulb air temperature, or they may rely solely on air to cool the working fluid,  to near the dry-bulb air temperature.

HVAC

​An HVAC cooling tower is a subcategory rejecting heat from a chiller. Water-cooled chillers are normally more energy efficient than air-cooled chillers, due to heat rejection to tower water at near wet-bulb temperatures. Air-cooled chillers must reject heat to the dry-bulb temperature, and thus have lower average reverse-Carnot cycle effectiveness. Large office buildings, hospitals, and schools typically use one or more cooling towers as part of their air conditioning systems. Generally, industrial cooling towers are much larger than HVAC towers.

Industrial

​Industrial cooling towers can be used to reject heat from various sources such as machinery or heated process material. The primary use of large, industrial cooling towers is to remove the heat absorbed in the circulating cooling water systems used in power plants, petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, natural gas processing plants, food processing plants, semi-conductor plants, and other industrial facilities.

Cleaning

The chemistry of the makeup water including the amount of dissolved minerals can vary widely. Makeup waters low in dissolved minerals such as those from surface water supplies (lakes, rivers etc.) tend to be aggressive to metals (corrosive). Makeup waters from ground water supplies (wells) are usually higher in minerals and tend to be scaling (deposit minerals). Increasing the amount of minerals present in the water by cycling can make water less aggressive to piping; however; excessive, levels of minerals can cause scaling problems.

As the cycles of concentration increase the water may not be able to hold the minerals in solution. When the solubility of these minerals has been exceeded they can precipitate out as mineral solids and cause fouling and heat exchange problems in the cooling tower or the heat exchangers. The temperatures of the recirculating water, piping and heat exchange surfaces determine if and where minerals will precipitate from the recirculating water. Often a professional water treatment consultant will evaluate the makeup water and the operating conditions of the cooling tower and recommend an appropriate range for the cycles of concentration. The use of water treatment chemicals, pre-treatment such as water softening, pH adjustment, and other techniques can affect the acceptable range of cycles of concentration.

Besides treating the circulating cooling water in large industrial cooling tower systems to minimize scaling and fouling, the water should be filtered and also be dosed with biocides and algaecides to prevent growths that could interfere with the continuous flow of the water.

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