One of the essential things to remember when it comes to expanding the life of your cooling tower is proper maintenance. Taking the proper safety precautions when performing maintenance is also paramount—safety and maintenance go hand in hand regarding cooling tower disinfection and cleaning.
FRP cooling tower is commonly applied in oil refineries, chemical plants, petrochemical plants, thermal power stations, and cooling buildings through HVAC systems. FRP Square Cooling Tower is a famous name among cooling towers. Some companies even use an FRP Round Cooling Tower or Pultruded FRP Cooling Tower. These cooling towers could be either in natural draft or induced draft. Read on to learn more about cooling tower safety precautions and what should be on your maintenance checklist.
What Safety Precautions Should You Take?
Whether you are performing maintenance, disinfection, and cleaning on your cooling tower or have a cooling tower cleaning service perform the work, it’s essential to know what cooling tower safety precautions are recommended. You must be familiar with the safety standards of cooling towers, regardless of whether you choose to clean, maintain, and disinfect your cooling tower on your own or pay a firm to do it for you.
Personal protective equipment, or PPE, is the primary precaution recommended before performing maintenance or cleaning on a cooling tower. PPE for cooling tower inspection or cleaning will look different than those worn by medical staff or those in other industries. PPE for those doing work on cleaning towers should include the following:
- Hard hat
- Safety glasses (or goggles)
- Work gloves
- High-top leather boots with nonslip soles
If a worker must enter the structure, then they should possess the following things:
- A full-body harness
- Two shock-absorbing lanyards that are six feet long or more
How To Maintain A Cooling Tower
Regular safety inspections should ensure that your FRP cooling tower is clean, safe, and functioning as it should. However, routine cooling tower disinfection should always be performed, regardless of the inspection outcome, as cooling towers are breeding grounds for Legionella, which can cause Legionnaires’ disease.
In addition to regular disinfection, you should execute several other maintenance points regularly:
Remove scaling – Limescale buildup occurs over time and can affect the efficiency of your machine, as well as cause premature corrosion. You can avoid this issue if you descale the cooling towers several times yearly.
Inspect the water pump – Ensure it is appropriately aligned, and lubricate the pump, motor bearings, and the water seal. Also, your pump should only run when the chiller does. Make sure your pump is running smoothly.
Check your water quality periodically – Poor water quality can worsen limescale buildup and scum, so check this during routine maintenance procedures.
Clean the tubes – The chiller tubes can fill with mud, algae, scale, and other debris, which can cause a complete or partial clog, leading to poor efficiency or a complete shutdown. Cleaning the tubes prevents this problem.
Improve air movement – Airflow issues constitute a significant cause of cooling towers not performing as effectively as they should and may even cause the system to collapse. If air cannot flow freely through the tower, the fan may malfunction, and the air in the tower may not feel chilly. Scaled or packed tower fill, a fan that needs to be adequately positioned or well-oiled, clogged filters, or poor water treatment may prevent airflow.
Scaling and placement – Evaporation of water in cooling towers produces water vapor, which is why Legionella outbreaks are associated with them. The bacteria cause illness when contaminated water comes into contact with mucosal membranes, most notably the lungs. Water evaporates while a tower operates properly, leaving deposits and scaling on the surfaces that transmit the most heat. Limescale development may reduce a tower’s effectiveness and cause it to collapse because it is an additional barrier or insulator, preventing heat from passing through. If you treat your water correctly, descaling should be done yearly.
Bottomline
For proper tower running, one should always give time-to-time service so that it runs properly and removes the heat efficiently. Towertech is the best FRP cooling tower manufacturer and gives the best quality cooling tower services that one can get.
From our services, we can ensure and improve the plant’s operation to our client’s needs. Based on skill or experience, our cooling tower services are tailored to all types and manufacturers of cooling towers.
