Improve Industrial Cooling Tower Energy Efficiency With These Tips
Hello, and welcome back to our blog! Here at Industrial Cooling Solutions Inc., we often have clients inquire about ways to improve the energy efficiency of their industrial cooling towers. For many industries, their cooling towers are running at a nearly constant rate which requires quite a bit of energy. Because every business is interested in saving money, finding a few ways to cut down on the energy consumption of a cooling tower, in the long run, can save a large chunk of change. To help address this issue, we have decided to dedicate today’s post to explaining a few tips in regard to cooling tower energy efficiency. We hope by the end of this blog post our clients, future clients, and all of those individuals who are interested in energy efficiency as it relates to industrial cooling towers come away with some valuable knowledge.
Cut Down on Energy, not Efficiency
Cooling towers are most often used in manufacturing processes and air-conditioning by utilizing the evaporation of water to transfer heat from the industrial process or building to the surrounding atmosphere. Because of this, industrial cooling towers consume massive amounts of water and are often one of the largest aspects of energy consumption for a given industry or building. To maximize the efficiency of any cooling tower, one must first evaluate each individual component of the cooling tower in order to determine that everything is functioning properly. Once this is done, certain steps may be taken to ensure that a cooling tower is consuming as little energy as possible. To help cut down on the amount of energy that cooling towers consume, we have listed a few energy efficiency tips below.
- Blowdown: the vast majority of cooling towers recycle the water used in the cooling process in order to be more energy efficient. This recycled water, often referred to as blowdown, is typically 10 degrees warmer than the water that is supplied to the tower from the basin. This can become an issue because the warmer the water is, the less efficient it is at mitigating heat. If a cooling tower is discharging warm water from the cooling tower basin, simply diverting the discharge blowdown water away from the cooling tower basin can provide a 1 to 2 percent improvement in energy efficiency. While this may seem like a small percentage, over the course of the cooling towers operations cycle, it can lead to a large amount of energy savings.
- Sun Shades: As anyone who deals with industrial cooling towers knows, algae growth is an issue that plagues every tower. In most instances, this algae growth occurs at the top of the tower which, in turn, prevents water from properly flowing over the cooling tower fill media. The solution to this issue is actually quite simple. Simply installing a sunshade over the top of the cooling tower will greatly reduce the amount of algae that is able to grow. This is due to the fact that algae, obviously, needs sunlight to grow. By limiting the amount of sunlight, one can limit the amount of algae growth which leads to higher energy efficiency and tower performance.
- Proper Cleaning and Filtration: Although we have mentioned it time and time again, cooling towers should be inspected periodically to ensure that the tower walls and fill media are free from scale buildup, corrosion, debris, and biological growth. All of these issues can greatly reduce the efficiency of the cooling tower which will lead to higher levels of energy being consumed. Additionally, it is important to make sure that the water being used in the tower is as clean as possible. Clean water will lead to fewer issues cropping up, less maintenance, and less wasted energy. If you find that your tower is constantly plagued by these issues, it may be time to consider an alternate water source or an upgraded filtration system.
We hope that this blog has given our readers a better understanding of the steps that are necessary to increase the energy efficiency of their industrial cooling tower. And, as always, if your cooling tower is in need of a maintenance check or upgrade, please do not hesitate to contact the experts at Industrial Cooling Solutions Inc. We are the cooling tower experts and will make sure that your industrial cooling tower is running as efficiently as possible.