There are multiple ways to clean your cooling tower. Cleaning cooling towers requires a lot of special gear. Here are five cooling tower products that cooling tower cleaning professionals can’t live without.
Foaming Cooling Tower Cleaning Chemicals
Cooling tower cleaning services make use of a lot of different cooling tower cleaning chemicals, but foaming cleaner is one of the most useful. The inside of a cooling tower is full of little nooks and crannies that can be very difficult to get at with cooling tower cleaning tools, and disassembling the tower greatly extends how long maintenance takes. A foaming cleaner will expand into tight spaces like the cooling tower fill, getting great coverage of surfaces without much effort and making cooling tower cleaning procedures more effective.
Cooling Tower Cleaning with Pressure Washers
Scrubbing out a cooling tower with manual cooling tower cleaning methods like brushes and squeegees is time-consuming. When a cooling tower needs cleaning, many professionals turn to pressure washers. Just blasting away with a powerful pressure washer will damage delicate cooling tower fills, though. Lower-powered pressure washers with less than 1500 psi of pressure will effectively clear sludge and debris off the fill without doing any damage. Specialized hoses and nozzles give cleaning professionals the extra flexibility they need to tackle different types of tower and use different cooling tower cleaning methods.
Cooling Tower Cleaning with Biocides
The warm, wet conditions inside a cooling tower provide a great environment for biological contaminants, and many cooling tower cleaning methods and tools are designed to deal with this exact problem. Bacteria like Legionella can rapidly colonize a cooling tower and spread potentially fatal diseases as they are dispersed by the cooling system. Algae is also a major issue, with algae blooms threatening to clog up pipes and damage components. Microorganisms will also cause the buildup of biofilm in your cooling tower, which can corrode surfaces and also acts as a great heat insulator, making the tower run a lot less efficiently. Mold is also a fairly common problem inside cooling towers.
One common biocide is chlorine, which is often used as a preventive cooling tower cleaning method. Other more specialized biocidal cooling tower cleaning solutions are usually designed to target specific organisms such as bacteria or algae and are added to tackle a specific problem instead of as a general preventive measure.
Cooling Tower Cleaning with Vacuums
Cooling towers are open to the air and can accumulate all kinds of contaminants over time. During cleaning, removed scale and biofilm, as well as excess cleaning chemicals and contaminated water, will end up sitting in the cooling tower basin. One cooling tower cleaning method that a lot of professionals use is to deploy a specialized vacuum to get all of the sludge and debris out. These wet/dry vacuums can remove all kinds of debris from chemical sludge to chunks of limescale, often without even having to drain the basin first. Attaching different accessories can equip the vacuum for whichever cooling tower cleaning method is needed.
Cooling Tower Cleaning with Commercial Bleach
Preventive cooling tower cleaning methods reduce biofilm buildup and other issues between scheduled tower maintenance sessions. One of the most common ways to kill off bacteria in a cooling system is to introduce chlorine into the cooling water. This can be done with chlorine gas, but commercial bleach provides a source of chlorine that is inexpensive and easier to store safely.
When using bleach, it is important to monitor your water chemistry regularly. Adding too much bleach will corrode your cooling system while adding too little won’t achieve the results that you want. Overly hard water will also reduce the effectiveness of bleach.
Is it time to clean your cooling tower? Contact Pinnacle Tower Cleaning Service for your free inspection and estimate.
Contact us
To learn more about cooling tower maintenance or to find out how we can help when it comes to routine cooling tower service and maintenance, contact Pinnacle Cooling Tower Service today at 732-570-9392. Our primary goals are safety, service, and customer satisfaction.
