Issue 21, November 2006

Cooling tower management or mismanagement, as is often the case, is a commonly misunderstood practice. Poor management of your cooling towers can result in expensive equipment failure or in the worst case scenario, loss of life.
 

Most Facility Managers rarely have the sufficient technical know how to interpret information about their cooling tower accurately and implement the correct resolution of issues arising from this data.

To truly understand the inner workings of your cooling tower and it’s associated systems you need to have a strong background in the following fields:

1. A sound understanding of biological processes, to assess the interpret the microbiological testing data effectively and understand the significance and response to microbial growth within the cooling system

2. Chemistry, so you can understand the compatibilities of chemicals that are used to treat the system, plus an understanding of corrosion, inhibition, toxicity and water quality.

3. Engineering, so you can understand cycle times, flow rates and engineering features associated with the cooling tower.

4. Occupational Health and Safety

5. Dangerous Goods management

6. Regulatory guidelines

7. Legal matters.

8. Risk Management

A popular solution is to hire a water treatment service provider to handle this for you. Do they, including their service technicians, have the experience and adequate knowledge of your cooling tower system?

As a result, we have seen many near catastrophes such as:

1. Water treatment failure due to incompatible chemical usage.

2. Legionella outbreaks from incorrect risk management plan development.

3. Excessive corrosion from poor chemical management resulting in destruction of expensive equipment.

4. Inaction from poor communication lines between monitoring and treatment contractors. This can result in prolonged exposure of the general public to legionella bearing cooling towers.

5. Water microbiological levels in cooling towers approaching levels associated with sewage.

The legal responsibilities of the tower generally fall to the site owner or site person responsible for maintenance of the cooling tower. Therefore, the onus is generally on the Facilities Manager to know what is happening to their cooling tower.

CETEC staff are all fully qualified scientists with backgrounds in chemistry, microbiology, engineering and occupational hygiene. We specialize in the Built Environment and Indoor Environment Quality.
Our experience of cooling towers ranges from preparation of RISK management plans, audit vendor assurance for tenants in lease arrangements, outbreak management, investigations and provision of expert witness on cooling tower systems.

Our consultants can arm you with this knowledge and provide sound technical advice to help educate you and provide you with the knowledge to assess and correct issues associated with your cooling towers.
 

For a range of related articles on:

Legionella Risk Management
 

 

Select another article from this issue:

	Achieving Building Sustainability with NABERS
	Acoustic Comfort in the Office - more than just Noise
	Technology Program to help Manufacturing SME's