HVAC, Building Performance: Cooling Tower Maintenance & Goodway’s Cooling Tower Vacuum
We’ve talked about cooling tower maintenance quite a bit on the Goodway blog. And now that it’s spring and we’re starting to think about air conditioning maintenance, the subject is on our minds once again.
If you look back at past posts, you’ll see that the top two reasons for cooling tower maintenance resonate through them all: energy efficiency/system performance and health.
Often the importance of cooling tower efficiency is a bit overlooked because the focus is on chiller efficiency.
“Chillers use about five times the energy of the cooling tower. Consequently, more attention is paid to the chiller than the cooling tower in most facilities,” Steve Spielmann, Goodway’s Customer Service/Technical Manager, explains in this post about cooling tower maintenance.
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AHR EXPO 2013 SHOW PREVIEW
Next week the who’s who of the HVAC world will be coming together in Dallas, TX for the annual AHR Expo trade show. And of course, Goodway will be there. In fact, this year could be the best show yet.
Goodway’s new CoilPro CC-400HF hiFlow Coil Cleaner
Stop by our booth (#2367) and see our brand new award winning products that will complete your maintenance tasks faster and easier than before, like our new CoilPro CC-400HF HiFlow coil cleaner that’s designed specifically for safely cleaning dirty, grimy coils up to 8 inches thick. Learn more.
CC-400HF Features:
- Hi-Flow pump system – Delivers 400 psi at 3.0 GPM
- Specialized attachments – Designed to clean coils from any angle, including back flushing in tight spot.
- Integrated Cleaner Injection – automatically pulls in coil cleaner when you need it.
- Portable Design – easily transported to rooftops and remote locations
We will also be showcase the latest in our tube cleaning line the RAM-PRO series. This is a workhorse with a soft side. Rugged, sturdy and built to last, but with the finesse to clean even the mos sensitive tubes. Learn more here.
Plus, we’re hosting a very special VIP party filled with good times, gifts and a special celebrity athlete guest that will be signing autographs, taking pictures and talking sports. We will also have
- Cocktail hour
- Goodway bag filled with great give aways
- Opportunity to win an iPad mini
- and much more….
But space is limited to this event so call a Goodway rep at 1-800-333-7467 to find out more about getting your VIP invite.
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Risk Management When Using Ammonia as a Refrigerant
Ammonia is looking like one of the more plausible solutions for replacing refrigerants that damage the environment including HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), as we note in our previous post, Ammonia As A Refrigerant: Pros and Cons – Follow Up.
Our 2009 post, Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons, has become one of our most popular blogs, possibly because of the buzz that’s been generated around using ammonia to replace common refrigerants.
While ammonia has been used less in the past because of health hazards as well as its smell, the newer technologies are making ammonia use safer in chiller tubes, air conditioner coils and cooling towers.
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A Greener Choice: Ammonia as a Refrigerant
Supermarkets are high energy users, with more than half of their energy usage attributed to refrigeration, according to an article in Environmental Protection.
The online publication points to a paper from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory that puts the average supermarket energy usage at 1 million to 1.5 million kWh per year. Compare that to the 11,040 kWh an average home uses per year. High energy usage, particularly with some of the older technologies, leads to more wear and tear on our ozone layer, according to the article.
The EPA’s GreenChill partnership program works with supermarkets and other food retailers to reduce refrigerant emissions by making operational changes, investing in new systems and focusing more intensely on leak prevention. Retailers showing the most improvement in energy efficiency initiatives are recognized yearly by the EPA. The most recent awards ceremony was held in early September.
Newer stores have the upper hand in emissions reductions as they can use newer refrigeration systems. Many of these newer stores offer technologies not available when the GreenChill program originally started.
Ammonia is part of a group of natural refrigerants, similar to propane, carbon dioxide and other gases, that is showing more use throughout the industry in, according to Supermarket News. These gases have little impact on global warming and don’t harm the ozone layer.
While ammonia has been used less in the past because of health hazards as well as its smell, the newer technologies are making ammonia use safer in chiller tubes, air conditioner coils and cooling towers. Ammonia is becoming a potential replacement for other refrigerants, such as R-22, which are known to harm the ozone and affect global warming harshly.
Keilly Witman, a representative for the EPA’s GreenChill program, spoke last spring at the Food Marketing Institute Expo about ammonia and other natural refrigerants dominating the food retail industry, according to Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News.
“In the U.S. supermarket industry, misconceptions of ammonia (R-717) and the codes that govern it, coupled with a lack of knowledge pertaining to the systems, serve as major hurdles that will need to be cleared before ammonia can be accepted as a viable alternative to traditional halocarbon refrigerants,” says Caleb Nelson of CTA Architects speaking at the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration’s annual conference in 2012.
In the same speech Nelson explains that ammonia has been used safely and efficiently for years in other industries around the world. The initial cost and training can be substantial, but they’re only temporary. And the issues with ammonia use are no different that the issues faced in using other natural refrigerant technologies.
Next Steps:
- Read Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons, one of our most popular posts.
- Read Ammonia As a Refrigerant: Pros and Cons Follow Up, a follow-up to the popular post.
- Subscribe to our blog to receive the full blog series via email and stay informed about the latest HVAC news and insight.
- Stay up to date on facility maintenance tools such as chiller tube cleaners, boiler tube cleaners, hose/pipe cleaners, descaler systems, industrial vacuums, commercial pressure washers, and drain cleaners.
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DEVAP Technology: The Wave of the Future?
R&D magazine has named it one of most important innovations of 2011. The U.S. Department of Energy calls it a “revolutionary technology.” We’re talking about DEVAP, or desiccant-enhanced evaporative air conditioning.
The U.S. Department of Energy reports DEVAP uses up to “90 percent less electricity and up to 80 percent less total energy than traditional air conditioning,” with an estimated payback in three years. As the MIT Technology Review explains, few inventions beat air conditioners for cooling. However, few inventions beat the air conditioner in terms of energy inefficiency. Air conditioning uses over 12% of the electricity generated in the U.S., according to the Business Insider.
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Legionnaires’ Disease Linked to Limescale Buildup
Legionnaires’ disease is making the headlines again, with at least 15 confirmed cases in April in Auckland, New Zealand. The cases are spread throughout the Auckland area, making it difficult to find the source and supporting the idea it’s likely present in more than one source. One person in Auckland has died after contracting the disease.
Officials in the Auckland region have encouraged over 300 building owners to chemically treat or “shock-dose” their cooling towers with a biocide to kill the outbreak.
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Preparing Your Restaurant’s HVAC System for the Summer Heat
It’s never too early to start preparing your restaurant’s or other food and beverage facility’s air conditioning unit for the upcoming summer months.
With the arrival of the unseasonably warm spring in many areas of the country this year, early preparation of your restaurant’s or food and beverage facility’s HVAC system is crucial to ensure that it’s working properly. With temperatures reaching the low 80s, many eateries and food and beverage facilities have been forced to turn on their air conditioning systems without having properly prepared them after a long winter of inactivity.
Preparing your HVAC system is important for any season, but the summer months can put additional stress on systems that are not maintained properly. Spring is the best time, as well as the most traditional time to prepare your air conditioning unit for the hot weather.
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DOE Searching for Rooftop Unit (RTU) Innovators
Goodway and the Just Venting blog strive to present information that will educate and inform about all things related to HVAC maintenance and management. Here we present information about efforts to future-proof equipment used every day in those endeavors.
First there was the “X” prize of $10 million for the first person to create a reusable spacecraft. That begat an X-prize for a super-fuel-efficient car, yet another for a way to inexpensively sequence the human genome and even one for sending a robot to the moon. This “X” prize mania has trickled down to the rest of the world in the form of somewhat more prosaic competitions – yes – even for such mundane things as air conditioners and heaters.
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