Cooling Tower Water Treatment
Taking care of the cooling tower water is not as easy as it looks. When a cooling tower water looks crystal clear, that means whoever is taking care of the cooling tower is doing a very good job. It also means that the process plant people is also doing a great job as a customer of the cooling tower water receiver. It also means that the operational part of the cooling tower is excellent. The mechanical part of the cooling tower is also in a tip top condition shape. The heat exchanger should also be performing to expectation.
You can expect some slimmy film sticking on your infill when oil leaks
Well, basically what a cooling tower water needs for treatment is basically as follows:
1. biocide
2. corrosion / scale inhibitor
3. Oil dispersant
Well, the specialty chemical required for any cooling tower depends on the cooling tower situation. What i've put on top there is just basic stuff. I'll elaborate on the chemicals in later posts. We must dose the right chemical at the right time, if not, the consequences might be devastating.
Well, you can read more about one company, Nalco, that have a cooling tower water chemical treatment.....read here...
Anyway...i'll talked more about the chemicals later on...
posted by Kipas Repair JB @ 8:27 PM,
3 Comments:
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At Saturday, October 14, 2006,
Joe Anybody said...
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In the cooling towers we have at my work ..I don't recall "oil dispersant" being mentioned. We are using an inhibitor/scaling product and then two biocides. I was just curious on the reference to oil?
At my place of work....
One tower is a single roof unit (the oldest)the other is a double unit... then on one more building next door we have a single big unit that almost could be considered two. I'm not sure of the sizes.
The oil dispersant you mentioned caught my eyes as unfamiliar.
Oh! Hows it going too? -
At Saturday, October 14, 2006,
Kipas Repair JB said...
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Well, oil dispersant is only required when some traces of oil (from oil industry) is leaking and entering the cooling water system. If your cooling tower system is running smooth and fine, you don't require this. Furthermore, it's applicable for me because my plant is processing/refining oil and involve some heat exchanger with the cooling tower water. I had experience worse leaking from January till august this year. The cooling water condition is very bad and my cooling tower looked terrible. The oil dispersant was there to disperse the oil which has mixed inside the cooling water so that it's easier to be removed via cooling tower blowdown and also when the oil accumulate on top of the cooling water surface woth the foams and scum.
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At Monday, October 16, 2006,
Joe Anybody said...
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Thanks ...Interesting!
we have a single tower that is always seemingly to have a brown water or silt in the sight glass/filter...even after cleaning it seems to get dirty way faster than the other towers.?
In the remodeled building we didn't catch the fact that the chemical wasn't getting to the tower and a film of green scummy stuff was in the water inside the tower...the engineer caught it and then cleaned it ...which I did ask if he wanted help ...but he didnt ask me so he got it all looking good again himself...and we got all the pumps working corectly.
That Cooling Tower has a huge fan blade over head and you can open a side door and walk into it to clean-it out. Lots of room. So far a month latter its looking fine!
We are using mostly LMI Timers and LMI brand pumps ...although the remodeled building does have these different brand of pumps ..they are dark blue and small with a digital display on the head.
I am learning more on the workings and settings of these ...
especially as the days "leak" by.(ha!)
The Author
I’m Zaki. I used to be a project, process and chemical engineer. Few years ago I successfully became a Chartered Engineer (IChemE) and Professional Engineer (BEM). I'm now employed as a chemical engineering educator/researcher/consultant. Hope you like reading my blog. I welcome any feedback from you. My email: zaki.yz[alias]gmail.com. TQ!
