Pretreatment
Makeup Water for Cooling Towers and Boilers
Mineral scale is a major threat to cooling towers, boilers, and manufacturing equipment. Scale is a biproduct of dissolved solids in the water falling out of solution and accumulating. Makeup water, usually municipal water, is added to replace the evaporative loss in open systems, as well as loss from the bleed/blowdown that sends accumulated contaminants to the sewer. Makeup water is both the cause and solution of scale – it initially brings the system back into water quality and water level compliance, but at the same time, untreated municipal water reintroduces new hardness, such as calcium, magnesium, silica, chlorides, and sulfates. To add difficulty, the hardness and pH of municipal water can vary greatly throughout the year, or even within the same city. Any chemical treatment plan will hit a natural limit where it cannot lower water consumption safely.
Reducing Makeup Water: Cycles of Concentration
Water efficiency in cooling towers and boiler systems is often measured in “cycles of concentration”, or more precisely, in the “concentration ratio”. This is the ration of key water quality metrics such as total dissolved solids between the water inside the system (highly concentrated) and the incoming makeup water (less concentrated). Increasing this ratio will bring water efficiency savings. Since cooling towers and boilers can only safely operate up to a maximum level of impurity concentration, the key to reducing the water consumption comes by lowering the denominator of the equation – the level of impurities in the incoming makeup water.
Find out more about our tools for assessing current water efficiency performance and coaching.
Pretreatment to Reduce Scale
For any water coming into a facility, whether it be for cooling tower and boiler makeup, domestic potable water, or feedwater for industrial production processes, removing these contaminants before they enter the process stream can be critical to running efficient operations and ensuring the intended lifespan of critical equipment.
EAI Equipment
Ion exchange and removal technologies play an important role in solving challenging water conservation, reusing, and recycling applications by harnessing the power of the natural process.
