Cooling Tower Filters
Virtually every industrial or commercial facility has a cooling tower. Statistics point to as much as 5% of municipal water is used each year in cooling tower makeup. Cooling Towers constantly "scrub" airborne contaminants from the atmosphere and often pick up particulate from the process using the cooled water. This buildup of dirt, algae and other particles can plug heat exchangers, and spray nozzles - and it’s costly to remove when the tower sumps get full. The LCF-Series or CTF-Series is the "filter of choice" for Cooling Tower Filters.
VAF Filtration Systems' Cooling towers, by design, are the world’s finest air scrubbers. As part of the cooling method, they flush airborne contaminates into the system, where they deposit on heat exchange surfaces. Suspended matter in the cooling water also supplies living microorganisms with a constant food source for sustaining life and multiplying.
A permanent medium filtration system can remove these contaminants before they increase the cost of operating the water-cooled equipment or shut the system down. And, combined with UV sterilization, constant side-stream filtration will result in a much cleaner system, with the UV providing a constant suppression of microorganism growth far below those achievable with chemical biocides.
Cooling water system treatment programs must include the following four specific parameters of control for successful equipment protection: Scale, Corrosion, Biological fouling, and Airborne contaminants. Airborne dirt affects scale control, corrosion and biofouling, and is the only one that cannot be measured. No one knows which way the wind will blow and what it will pick up in its travels and deposit into the system.
VAF's Cooling Tower Filtration Advantages:
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Maintains heat transfer efficiencies
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Increases system life
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Reduces treatment chemical costs
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Enhances effectiveness of water treatment program
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Reduces maintenance by minimizing the need for manual cleaning
Legionella Prevention for Cooling Towers
"No building should be making people sick; however, because of poor maintenance and cleaning efforts, the water in cooling towers has the ability to serve as the breeding ground for a variety of bacteria. One such bacterium is Legionella, the root cause of the recent major Legionnaires’ disease outbreak in New York City that sadly claimed several lives and sickened many people.
However, this situation is completely avoidable since technologies exist today to ensure cooling towers are kept clean. The dust and debris that bacteria like to propagate in can be removed and kept out through proper maintenance, filtration, water treatment, and monitoring. This will control the growth of bacteria, such as Legionella, and ensure that outbreaks, such as Legionnaires’, are prevented."-Richard Gerbe
VAF solutions consist of state-of-the-art, self-cleaning screen filtration technology that can be applied to cooling towers. With basin water kept in perpetual motion, a VAF filter is able to screen out tiny particles of dust and debris, including sand, silt, scale particles, rust particles, algae, and chemical residue. This precise filtration discourages the growth of Legionella.
VAF and CEC allows you to choose a technology that:
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Minimizes flush waste
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Removes finer particles that are both organic and inorganic
If an efficient tower with a long life, and low maintenance costs is the objective, then the solution is to provide cooling tower water filtration. Several filtration technologies are available for cooling towers and work well removing these particles. Filtration features to look for include:
Remove both organic and inorganic suspended solid particles with the filtration technology.
Uninterrupted filtration during the flush or screen cleaning process. Keep the filtration process on line.
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Low flush flow rates somewhere in the range of 5 to 10 percent of the filter’s total flow rate. Lower flush flow rates in percent of total flow will minimize wasted treatment chemicals as well as minimize make-up water.
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Short cleaning cycles (15 seconds) result in less water waste to clean the screen.
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Simplicity for ease of maintenance. Fewer moving parts and simpler controls result in less maintenance and training requirements. Look for the simplest drive mechanisms.
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25 micron filtration is the most common filtration degree for cooling tower water. The filtration degree required may be less depending on tower location and local conditions.