Regular cooling tower maintenance is essential if you want to make the most of its lifetime and maintain it in top condition. All safety measures must be followed when cleaning and sanitizing cooling towers. The importance of both safety and maintenance cannot be overstated. Read on to learn more about cooling tower safety concerns, what should be on a maintenance checklist, and how to take care of it.
What Safety Precautions Should You Take?
You must be familiar with the safety standards about cooling towers, regardless of whether you choose to clean, maintain, and disinfect your cooling tower on your own or pay a firm to do it for you.
Before doing any maintenance or cleaning work on a cooling tower, it is essential to put on personal protective equipment, often known as PPE. The personal protective equipment (PPE) that is worn by persons whose jobs include inspecting or cleaning cooling towers is distinct from the PPE that is worn by people whose jobs involve working in the medical profession or other industries.
How to Maintain a Cooling Tower?
Your cooling tower must undergo regular safety inspections to ensure it is secure, free of obstructions, and operating as it should. Whatever the test results, cooling towers need to be cleaned often because Legionella, which may cause Legionnaires’ illness, flourishes there. High humidity and temperatures, both found in cooling towers, are ideal conditions for Legionella growth. This is so because Legionella may develop in high condensation concentrations, often present in cooling towers.
In addition to cleaning and sanitizing, a few other maintenance tasks need to be done every day. The following duties are some of them:
Machine inspection
The first stage in cooling tower maintenance is to do regular inspections. If the water pump in a cooling tower isn’t greased regularly, it might create complications. A well-maintained pump with no back-and-forth resistance will function better and cost less. Check the pump’s alignment during lubrication and lubricate the motor bearings and water seal.
Improve the movement of air
Airflow issues are a major cause of cooling towers not performing as effectively as they should and may even cause the system to collapse. If air cannot flow freely through the tower, the fan may malfunction, and the air in the tower may not feel chilly. Scaled or packed tower fill, a fan that isn’t properly positioned or well-oiled, clogged filters, or poor water treatment may prevent airflow.
Water Repair
Water treatment is critical to how smoothly and safely a cooling tower operates. Legionella is a dangerous bacterium that thrives in cooling towers. Alternative to treating the water in a cooling tower for Legionella, other approaches may aid it. Biofilms, scaling, and corrosion may occur when the pH is out of balance if biological pollutants are present. These things harm equipment, induce fouling and impair its performance. Treating the water in a cooling tower extends its life and protects humans against Legionella infections.
Tower Tubes Must Be Clean
If air conditioners or chillers are not serviced regularly, the condenser tubes may get clogged, making it difficult for heat to transfer between the tower and the air. Scale, slime, algae, and other muck may accumulate in a condenser tube, limiting its cooling capacity and causing the system to fail. Contaminants may accumulate even if the water in a cooling tower is properly cleaned. Therefore it is critical to clean it regularly.
Scaling and placement
Evaporation of water in cooling towers produces water vapor, which is why Legionella outbreaks are associated with them. The bacteria cause illness when contaminated water comes into contact with mucosal membranes, most notably the lungs. Water evaporates while a tower operates properly, leaving deposits and scaling on the surfaces that transmit the most heat. Limescale development may reduce a tower’s effectiveness and cause it to collapse because it serves as an additional barrier or insulator, preventing heat from passing through. If you treat your water properly, descaling should be done yearly.
Final Thoughts
The only thing that needs to be done is for the contractors who work on cooling towers to undertake routine and preventive maintenance. These companies need to use effective methods for testing and purifying water, in addition to technology dealing with waste management. If each of these preconditions is satisfied, the surgical procedure is risk-free and helpful to the patient’s overall health and success. However, you can get the best advice from the experts at Towertech, who are the cooling tower manufacturers. in case of any queries get in touch with the experts of cooling towers in India.