Industry in general, and cooling tower operators specifically, are urged to implement novel strategies to reduce process demands for fresh and potable water, and to expand the use of treated wastewater streams and recycled water as cooling tower makeup.
Cooling systems are generally accepting of a wide diversity of waters and, given some consistency, many industrial streams can be economically recovered and reused as tower makeup. However, recoverable process waters will always require some judicious pretreatment before being recycled for reuse in cooling systems, if only to remove particulates, fats, oils, and greases (FOG), and heavy metals; and provide pH adjustments (say pH 7.0 to 8.5). Suitable candidates may include waters employed for:
- Washing, cleaning, dying, rinsing, melting, quenching, stripping, scrubbing, desalting, plating, surface coatings, fermentation, dust control, process liquors, steam heating and drying, cooking, pasteurization, and domestic purposes.
- Additionally, excess water results from alcohol and spirit distillation, sugar/fish-meal/orange juice evaporator condensates, chemical manufacturing, recovery of fibers and chemicals, straining, filtration, drainage, stormwater storage, etc.