Is Your Cooling Tower Ready For Winter?

As summer fades into fall, thousands of businesses across the United States are preparing their cooling towers for the lower temperatures that are about to descend upon the land. Unless you are lucky enough to live in a state that experiences mild winters in comparison to the rest of the country, chances are that you can expect the next few months to get increasingly colder until, quite suddenly, the winter months are fully upon you. While humans have found many ways to deal with the lower temperatures, special attention needs to be paid to the machinery that makes our modern lives possible. In today’s post, we here at Industrial Cooling Solutions Inc. wanted to go over some tips that are designed to make sure you have taken the necessary steps to ensure that your industrial cooling tower is ready for winter and will not fail you during an inconvenient time. Continue reading below to learn more.

Don’t Let the Cold Weather Get Your Cooling Tower Down

When it comes to proper cooling tower operation in cold weather temperatures, certain steps must be taken to ensure that the tower not only does its job effectively but does it in a way that does not cause unneeded damage to the cooling tower itself. Cooling towers, by their very nature, are supposed to be able to operate in a wide range of temperatures. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean that they don’t struggle to be effective when certain ambient temperatures are thrust upon them. Below, we have listed a few steps you need to take to make sure that your cooling tower does its job properly all winter long without worrying about damage occurring to the tower or any of its components.

• Remove Scale: If you have read any of our previous blogs, you are already well aware of the fact that reducing the amount of scale buildup and biological contaminants present within the cooling tower is one of the best ways to make sure that your tower is operating as efficiently as possible. When there is a lot of buildup on the inside of a cooling tower, the heat mitigation abilities of the tower are reduced to less than optimal levels. While this little maintenance tip is most commonly talked about during the summer months, it is still an important thing to remember during colder months. Reducing the amount of scale buildup present in the tower lowers the likelihood of corrosion, a condition that can negatively affect the rate of heat transfer.

• Remove Snow and Ice Buildup: This tip is really only pertinent if you live in an area that experiences snow and freezing temperatures, however, because many areas of the country have to deal with these two factors, we felt that it was important to include it in this list. When it comes to your cooling tower, you want to make sure that the fan blade is free from any ice or debris that may have gathered along the blades. Industrial cooling tower fan blades rotate at extremely fast speeds, meaning that even a small imbalance caused by excessive snow or ice buildup can be enough to reduce the efficiency of the fan or, in a worst case scenario, cause the fan to break from unbalanced rotational forces. While it is true that newer FRP fan blades are less likely to experience damage in this way, we feel that it is still important to make sure that your fan is free from anything that could potentially cause issues.

• Antifreeze: Depending upon the ambient air temperature, cooling towers should have a certain amount of glycol present in their systems. Glycol works much like the antifreeze in a vehicle, reducing the temperature at which liquid produces ice crystals. By reducing the temperature at which the liquid in your cooling tower freezes, you can make sure that any spray nozzles and fill material that are constantly exposed to water or less likely to freeze over. While fill material can be unfrozen relatively easily, a frozen spray nozzle can easily lead to a busted spray nozzle.

• Keep Your Tower Warm: One of the best ways to make sure that your cooling tower is not negatively affected by low ambient air temperatures is to keep it as warm as possible for as long as possible. Maintaining heat in the tower, coupled with the antifreeze that should be present in the liquid, will make it difficult for ice crystals to develop even if the outside air temperature is well below freezing. To accomplish this, we suggest that you set your water pump to run continuously. As the water pump draws heat from the building it is connected to, the water entering the tower will be warmer than the water that is already present in the tower. Additionally, the pump itself will produce heat, further reducing the chances that something freezes that isn’t supposed to.

If you are in need of industrial cooling tower services, please contact us today at Industrial Cooling Solutions Inc. We provide cooling tower construction, maintenance, and repair services and can provide you with any and all parts that your tower may need including fan motors, fan blades, and fill materials. Don’t settle for second best when it comes to your cooling tower needs, contact us today and let us show you why we have become a trusted name in the industry.