Cooling Towers Represent a Significant Opportunity to Reduce Water, Energy and Hazardous Chemical Use
- Most industrial & commercial cooling towers use chemicals to treat the cooling water in the system
- AQMD (US-CA) has air emission standards for tower aerosol – based on chem use
- EU as well as US jurisdictions have growing restrictions on chemical discharge for cooling towers
- EPRI estimates that 6,985 GWh or ~35% out of the total 20,061 GWh used for annual cooling and refrigeration is used in water cooled equipment in CA. It also estimates that 1,179 million gallons of potable water is used in CA cooling towers annually in just commercial buildings alone
- There are huge water savings that are not being realized!
- According to the Cooling Technology Institute, over 55% of cooling towers, including new towers, fail to meet their performance specification Cooling Towers require consistent attention and maintenance
- CTs are critical to efficient operation of chiller, refrigeration, process loads and power plants
- HVAC can use ~35 – 50% of facility’s water even more critical when there is an extreme drought in CA and the West US
- Most Cooling Tower operators ignore or unaware of efficient tower operations
- Scale of just 1.5 mils or 0.0015 inch thickness is estimated to decrease thermal efficiency by 12.5%*
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Ref: HVAC Energy Conservation through Cooling Water Treatment http://water-cti.com/pdf/ESPG/LSI 01_CalciumFoulingFactors_Cooling.pdf