Thursday, August 28, 2008

Reducing Energy with Water Treatment

Many industrial and commercial machines require cooling. Most often this cooling is done with cooling water. The two most common ways to cool with water are once-through or closed loop with a cooling tower.

Once through cooling uses fresh city water, cools the machine and goes to drain. Replacing this, right off, is a huge dollar savings. With the cost of water and sewer a cooling tower could offer a 1 year payback or less just on these cost.

The other, preferred, way to cool this machine is with a closed-loop cooler such as a cooling tower. Cooling towers use the evaporative cooling effect to cool water. They are very efficient and consume only what water is evaporated. The downside of a water staying in cooling tower is it's propensity to have biological growth such as algae. This is countered with water treatment.

Proper water treatment can be as simple as using chlorine or bromine. Another, higher tech solution, is an ozone generator. The ozone generator produces ozone O3 and injects it into the water. This ozone is a powerful biocide and keeps the water crystal clear. Using a reputable water treatment specialist is key to understanding your water treatment needs. Proper water treatment can also improve air quality and reduce certain health issues such as legionnaires disease.

Untreated water causes machine fouling from algae inside the cooling tubes. This slowly takes machine efficiency away and can even cause machine damage. Properly applied water treatment with a cooling tower saves water, sewer and can improve machine efficiency reducing energy consumption and energy cost.

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