Recycling waste water to cooling towers frequently influences treatment performance. Important considerations include water quality, system dynamics, and program selection. Plants implementing waste water reuse strategies involving recycle to a cooling tower continues to increase.

Conventional wisdom dictates the use of ground or surface water for cooling tower make-up, but water shortages and regulatory concerns drive industry to study reuse options. Industrial and municipal waste streams provide industry with previously untapped resources. These streams may contain constituents such as organics, sulfides, ammonia and metals.

Contaminant type and concentration will mandate recycle potential and any necessary stream pretreatment. Processes such as reverse osmosis, side-stream softening, oxidation, and ion exchange may be required. Problem components may also influence cooling water treatment selection. System dynamics that must be reviewed in any recycle program include metallurgy, holding time index (HTI), and velocity. Due to the existence of contaminants in recycled water, tower control and program performance monitoring is of paramount importance.

Case studies are presented which discuss these topics.

Subject
Water, Metal surfaces, Cooling water treatment, Contaminants, Phosphates, Cooling water systems, Metals, Water quality, Towers, Cooling towers, Fouling, Wastes, Waste water
Keywords:
recycle, cooling water, contaminants, water reuse, waste water
© 1993 Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of AMPP. Positions and opinions advanced in this work are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of AMPP. Responsibility for the content of the work lies solely with the author(s).
1993
Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP)
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