How to Improve Water Efficiency on Your Cooling Tower

You might not think much about the smaller and mid-sized cooling towers that help run your plant, but that doesn't mean they can be ignored. These towers are just important as any piece of equipment you have on your property. You can improve water efficiency in your water cooling towers and subsequently preserve energy and save you money.

Piping Change

Simple repairs like a change to the water piping can help you mange your energy consumption. Changing one pipe to discharge blowdown water to return hot water can improve the overall energy efficiency of the cooling system by up to 2%. It's important to handle the equipment carefully, however. Consult with professionals who are knowledgeable about cooling towers and/or pipe replacement.

Focus on Recycling

Ensuring that your cooling tower is properly functioning and properly recycling is important for water management, energy preservation, and saving money. High quality cooling towers are manufactured and designed to recycle at least 98% of all wasted system water. Recycling that much water can result in major energy and water reductions and can end up saving you and your business money and improve water efficiency.

Periodically Inspect all Equipment

Inspections are an essential part of making sure cooling systems are properly working. If you ignore them -- which many people often do -- you could end up be wasting much more energy than needed -- and end up spending more money. Regularly performing maintenance and repair checks to your cooling system is imperative for operating and maintaining a plant. Look for heat transfer areas, corrosion, biological growth and any particle pollution deposits. Those damages and problems can reduce energy efficiency for the entire cooling system by at least 5% -- and maybe even more.

Increase Cooling Cycles

Being aware of the number of cycles your cooling tower uses is important as well. Increasing cooling water cycles from three to six can reduce make-up water by up to 20% and can even reduce cooling tower blowdown by up to half. Many people don't focus on cooling towers, because they just don't have the equipment high up on their priority list. It's important to improve water efficiency on all your cooling towers to preserve energy, save money, and run a smooth plant.