Water Treatment Blogger [www.h2oside.com]

I was asked a “what’s the catch...” question the other day after sharing the success of our program with a potential client. “…okay let me sum up what you are trying to tell/sell me; - - you say that we can discharge less than 2% of the total water used in our cooling towers, - - get extremely low corrosion rates, - - have zero heat robbing deposits, - - no biological growth, - - no need for any chemical once the protective WCTI chemistry has been achieved. You go on to say that we can actually use recycled waste water without using expensive pretreatment equipment like HERO, demineralizers and do not need to build evaporative ponds and also stop the need for post tower bleed treatment etc… How can that be??... Furthermore, you say we can do all this in most cases for less than a chemical program? OKAY, what’s the catch?” Not being a fisherman myself, and seeing that the client was an avid fly fisherman (personally, I prefer seeing fish fly at Pike Place Market - its a Seattl...

Due to the nature of cycled up cooling tower chemistry, "wet/dry - wet/dry" deposits accumulate on surfaces such as drift eliminators / louvers / fill / splash guards. Unfortunately, up until WCTI high TDS water chemistry, this build up was a hard and tenacious CaCO3 type scale from chemically treated systems. Now we see that WCTI with its higher TDS water, appears to build slightly different deposits - is this a problem? No - These deposits are now non-adherent and highly soluble since they no longer contain the hard scale forming ions of calcium and magnesium. Deposits can now be easily washed down with HES conditioned water at garden hose pressures saving man-hours and damage to the fill caused by high pressure cleaning. A side benefit of washing down your tower is that it actually keeps your tower externals looking cleaner, free from dirt, algae and scale deposit buildup.