Three Steps to Keep Your Cooling Tower Safe and Healthy

Posted on: 7 July 2016

A recent outbreak of Legionnaire's disease in Sydney has been linked to a water cooling tower at St George Hospital. This is a scary disease, and if you are a business owner, you may be wondering what you can do to ensure your cooling tower isn't at risk of causing an outbreak. Here's what you need to keep in mind:

1. Consider switching to a continuous disinfection method.

Legionnaires outbreaks related to cooling towers occur when Legionella bacteria get into the water supply of the cooling tower and get circulated into the air. Disinfection ensures that if these bacteria are present that they are killed.

In most cases, cooling towers have one of three disinfection methods: manual, automatic or continuous. If your cooling tower has a manual or automatic disinfection process, talk with a cooling tower parts specialist about modifying your machine so that it is continuously disinfected.

2. Do regular culture samples.

Regardless of the disinfection system you have, you should keep an eye on potential issues by doing regular culture samples. Essentially, you look at the water basin in the cooler and examine it for visual contaminants. If it has visual issues, call a repair person as soon as possible. If not, continue with a culture sample, and send it to a lab so they can look for algae or bacteria.

3. Schedule regular inspections.

Ideally, you should also have your water cooling tower inspected on a regular basis. Companies who provide cooling tower mechanical services often do inspections as well. You want them to look at the water make-up connections -- are the seals tight to prevent unwanted air carrying bacteria to come in? Similarly, you want to make sure that all of the pumps and gauges are also in working order as they are responsible for moving the water through the system, and you don't want the water to sit and stagnate.

In addition, you want the inspector to check out the water basin to ensure it doesn't have any issues that may make it more prone to bacteria. Similarly, the drift eliminator needs to be in working order. The drift eliminator prevents water droplets from forming in the cooling tower's stream of air. It works by reversing the direction of the droplets so they fall back into the basin. If this process isn't working correctly, water may pool around the cooling tower inviting bacteria or mold.

Want to ensure your cooling tower is healthy and working as expected? Then, contact a cooling tower mechanical services company, such as Cooling Tower Sales & Service Pty Ltd.

 

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