Cooling Tower Cleaning: A Roundup of Reasons

If you’re a regular reader of Just Venting, and/or if you’re involved in any aspect of commercial and industrial HVAC cleaning and maintenance, then it’s no secret to you that cooler tower cleaning is one of Goodway’s specialties. After all, we have a whole line of equipment — our CTV-1501 Cooling Tower Vacuum, our TFC-100 TowerWash Cooling Tower Fill Cleaner, our CTV-F2 Cooling Tower Filter System — dedicated to it.

The current spring season is prime-time for directing attention to this necessary task, and so for your convenience and edification we thought it would be a great time to review and emphasize the basic reasons you need to focus on system cleaning and maintenance. We’ve mined not only our own blog archives but also some other Internet resources to summarize the reasons for keeping current with your cooling tower cleaning schedule.

Reason #1: Improved efficiency and energy management

Facilities management expert James Piper, in “5 Threats to Chiller Efficiency,” lists five major threats to the efficiency of commercial/industrial chillers. Note especially number 3:

1. Poor operating practices
2. Ignored maintenance
3. Ignoring cooling towers
4. Oversizing
5. Ignoring alternative-fuel chillers

In “Energy Management Opportunities for Cooling Systems,” FMLink explains the direct link between energy management and cooling tower health:

No matter where your facility is located, your cooling system consumes a large amount of energy each year. Preventive maintenance measures and the right operating techniques can help reduce energy consumption and reduce operating costs, while also extending the life of your cooling system….Heat transfer capacities are reduced when scale or dust fouls the heat transfer surfaces on evaporators and condensers. Water circulated in evaporative-cooled condensers and cooling towers should be filtered and chemically treated to reduce the formation of scale, algae, and chalky deposits.

And if all that’s not enough, the U.S. Department of Energy pointed out in a recently revised version of their FEMP (Federal Energy Management Program) that “The thermal efficiency and longevity of the cooling tower and equipment used to cool depend on the proper management of water recirculated through the tower” (“Best Management Practice: Cooling Tower Management”).

Reason #2: Improved health

Last May we published a post (“Protecting against Legionella by Cleaning Your Cooling Towers”) about the serious issue of Legionella contamination in cooling towers. Here’s the short version:

As described in a recent article in the American Journal of Infection Control, the chances of a cooling tower being infected with deadly strains of Legionella are close to 50 percent….If there is an outbreak, one of the first places investigators will look is cooling towers upwind of the infections. They can — and will — test your water and determine if the strain of Legionella making someone ill is the same as that present in your cooling tower. The good news in all this is that while the risks are definitely present, it is a fairly simple matter to keep them under control by keeping your system clean and well-maintained – good advice no matter what the levels of bacteria — and testing to make sure things stay that way.

Reason #3: It makes everything better

Here’s our short-but-sweet summation of the whole thing, from our post “Cleaning Your Cooling Tower: Now Is the Time“:

The benefits of cleaning your cooling tower are well established and pretty clear: you will reduce the possibility that your cooling tower can become a source of contamination by spreading such bacteria as the one that causes Legionnaire’s Disease.  You can also get rid of algae and any other contaminants so you can go into the winter with your HVAC running at peak efficiency. At the same time, a clean cooling tower can help you maximize your entire HVAC system’s operations, enabling maximum heat-transfer efficiency.

Of course we know that we don’t have to actually “sell” you on the value, in fact the necessity, of keeping your cooling towers ship-shape. After all, it’s just common sense. But it doesn’t hurt at all to be reminded and remotivated. As Martin Luther shrewdly observed, “How soon ‘not now’ becomes ‘never.’” In other words, if you put something off, you dramatically increase your likelihood of never doing it at all.

Speaking of which, don’t you have a cooling tower to check on?

Matt Cardin
Goodway Blogging Team

Image courtesy of Goodway Technologies

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