Cooling towers remove the heat from industrial buildings, through the cooling of a water stream to a lower temperature and cool it down. This way the excess heat from the industries is discarded which saves the setup from any accidents or damages. It is a must for industries, be it large scale or small scale.
Cooling towers need acute attention and proper maintenance to get the most out of it. These are constructed using different components like polyvinyl chloride fill, FRP (Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic) walls, fan decks, stacks and blades, and louvers, partition and catch basin. These components are prone to catching fire even while the cooling tower is offline. This makes cooling tower maintenance of utmost importance in order to ensure that these components and parts are working fine.
Different factors contribute to the failure of cooling towers such as corrosive water, lack of monitoring, atmospheric conditions and so forth. So let’s have a look at some primary causes of cooling tower failures:
Contaminated water
Cooling towers, most of the time are exposed to the environment, which results in contamination of water due to the pollution in the air. And when the evaporation occurs the pure water vapor evaporates leaving the contaminated water in the cooling tower in a concentrated form. This gives rise to the corrosion process. The process of corrosion is directly proportional to the velocity of the water. Water, when flows with high velocity give rise to the volume of corrosion by transporting oxygen and particulates to the metal pipes very quickly.
The pH balance gets highly affected due to water contamination, giving rise to deterioration and corrosion.
pH balance
The water in cooling towers comes from various sources and that determines the pH balance of the water. The pH balance of the normal water gets disturbed due to the dynamic sources which make it either too acidic or too alkaline. The pH balance scale decides the amount of corrosion; causing failure to the whole system. The water becomes acidic if the pH balance scale indicates 6 or lower, which increases corrosion to a greater extent. And with a pH balance of 8 or higher, the water becomes too alkaline.
Without the annual inspection, and maintenance of industrial cooling towers, no one would know about the pipe deterioration, which may cause a fire in the industry, leaving no water supply for fire sprinklers.
Such situations cause different devastating attacks on the metal like General attack, where corrosion is even on the metal surface; pitting attack is when corrosion is over the small areas of metal, and galvanic attack is when corrosion occurs due to two different metals being in contact.
Warm environment
A warm environment is where the microbes grow easily. The growth of microbes leads to oxygen concentration cells, this occurs when scaling and metal pipes entrap oxygen, refraining it from diffusing naturally and uniformly. The cell concentration in one place eats away the pipe where it is trapped. A warm environment plays the role of catalyst in this process, doubling the corrosion rate. This causes industrial water cooler towers to fail and damage.
The regular inspection of this issue can be detected earlier by taking measures to save it and avoid any fire event from occurring.
In Summary
These are the factors that contribute to the failure of industrial cooler towers. The process of inspection can get vicious since it doesn’t stop operating yet the process of inspection ought to be taken out in order to avoid any hazardous events due to the formation of scales and corrosion. You can avoid cooling tower from failing by detecting these issues at an early stage and start the repairing process. The periodic inspection, tests, and maintenance of cooling towers also increase longevity.
At TowerTech Cooling System Pvt Ltd. we assist you to get the optimum from your industrial cooling towers and provide several services like ensuring safe working environment, lessen the downtime of the failures of equipment, provide structural repairs, spare parts, performance evaluation, regular maintenance and cleaning, thermal upgrades, and erection & project services.
Our team of specialist engineers and technicians can also perform necessary tests and technical analyses of your existing cooling towers whether it is manufactured by TowerTech or any other supplier.
