Adiabatic coolers eliminate Legionella contamination threat 01 May 2013

ICS Cool Energy is recommending the application of adiabatic coolers in place of cooling towers to help eliminate the risk of legionella, and save on costs and energy.

Pointing to the legionella outbreak in Edinburgh last June (2012), the firm notes that adiabatic coolers consume 0.25% of the water used in conventional cooling towers, and come in at around one third of their running costs.

ICS's coolers include inverter control and ac and ec fans, and do not need to be registered with local authorities.

Further, an ultraviolet system is supplied as standard which ensures that main water feed supplied to adiabatic coolers is clean, killing 99.99+% of legionella bacteria.

Adiabatic coolers rely on mechanical cooling supported by 'free cooling' for the majority of the year (97%), meaning the adiabatic spray system may only used for 3% of the year, according to ICS.

A typical adiabatic cooler, cooling process water from 35°C down to 30°C in ambient conditions would expect to see annual evaporative water consumption of around 56m3, with an additional 14m3 for purges.

An open circuit cooling tower relies solely on latent heat removal during the evaporation of water. The latent heat of evaporation of water is 2,260kj/kg, meaning that for every kW of heat removed from the circulating water, 1.6kg of spray water must be evaporated.

In addition, there is a necessity to bleed off a similar amount of water to avoid residual solids left in the cooling tower base tank clogging up the tower. Using this example, annual water usage of 27,955m3.

As well as water costs there are the chemical dosing treatment fees, which would typically total £8,000, plus installation and commissioning, and on-going maintenance costs.

Brian Tinham

Related Companies
ICS Cool Energy Ltd

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