Cleaning Cooling Tower- Is it a Dirty Job??

CASE Cooling Tower - Man at Work

A cooling tower controls the efficiency of overall air conditioning system. Therefore, it makes sense to

keep the equipment as clean as possible so as to get optimum level of performances.

Unfortunately, cleaning the cooling tower is not an easy task. The owner of the equipment has to depend upon crew of maintenance workers to clean and inspect the entire machine. The intensive job includes a series of toilsome steps like:

• Complete shutting down and draining of cooling tower which means losing all the water treatment
• Shutting down of chiller though which the cooling tower cell supplies chilled water
• Scheduling after-hours for tower cleaning which sometime, leads to overtime costs
• Cleaning the entire water distribution basin and spray nozzles, located at the tower top.
• Workers have to shovel the bulk of the debris out of the basin.
• The basin is then washed out using a pressure washer or fire hose
• After the completion of cleaning process, the cell must be refilled and the water treatment process need to be reestablished

It is recommended that a cooling tower must be cleaned two to four times a year. However, cleaning the tower while shutting down the entire process offers considerable loss and problems where the cooling demand is high. Henceforth, the occupant comfort and money might be compromised. 

The time-taking task is laborious and sometimes, workers consider it as dirty job.