Cooling is an indispensable part of many industrial processes. An industrial cooling tower is the heart of any industrial process that necessitates cooling as a course of action. Cooling towers are used to cool water treatment in large volumes. These are specialized heat exchangers where water and air are brought into contact so as to bring the water’s temperature down.
Although cooling towers help to make a plant’s indoor environment cooler, if left untreated, these can become home to various harmful types of bacteria like Legionella and may also become susceptible to scaling, organic growth, and corrosion. This will not only mean unhygienic conditions for the workers but may also lead to reduced plant productivity and the need for expensive equipment replacements down the road. This is when you may need the help of specialists. Branded companies like Merus can help you fix any problem with the cooling tower, so your industry can keep running safely and efficiently.
But how exactly does the cooling tower water treatment system works and what does it control? Let’s find out.
Cooling Tower Water Treatment
Treatment for a cooling tower includes an arrangement of technologies that work to eliminate all the damaging impurities from the feed water, circulation water as well as blowdown. It can help control and regulate alkalinity, hardness, iron, organic matter, silica, sulfates, TDS and TSS.
What and how these technologies are employed to treat a cooling tower depend on many different things, including
- Type of cooling tower (open or closed loop)
- Quality of the feed water
- Chemistry of the circulatory water
- Recommended quality requirements for the cooling tower
How does it work?
Based on the above and other parameters, a treatment system for your cooling tower may include the given steps –
Cooling tower makeup water intake
It may not be always needed depending on the water quality, but when needed, the technology used removes silica and hardness and the pH level of water is stabilized.
Filtration and ultrafiltration
In this step, the cooling tower water treatment is filtered to remove the suspended particles.
Ion exchange
Ion exchange resin refers to a softening process. It is suitable for makeup water that contains dissolved salts. The process removes magnesium and calcium ions while replacing
them with sodium ions. The advantage of sodium ions is that they form highly soluble salts, which don’t precipitate and hence don’t cause scaling.
Chemical addition
Different chemicals to neutralize the acidity of water, checking the growth of microbes, scale inhibitors, etc are added to further treat the water.
Side-stream filtration
A side-stream filter is any filter that is used to clean a portion of the water in a cooling tower. A side-stream filter is used to filter a portion of the water continuously. The principle behind this technique is that the constant removal of particles keeps the system clean.
Blowdown treatment
When water evaporates from the cooling tower, the dissolved solids like silica, calcium, chloride, magnesium, etc persist in the water that is recirculating. The concentration of these dissolved solids keeps increasing as more water evaporates. Too high concentration leads to the formation of scales and may also cause corrosion problems. The problem is solved by replacing concentrated water with fresh makeup water.
Conclusion
For an industry to keep running efficiently, it is important that due inspection of each component is carried out on a regular basis. Proper treatment of the cooling tower water system is very important for both the safety of the workers and the manufacturing process to keep running smoothly. But you should only trust experts in the field so that no compromise of any kind is done.
