Cooling and heating temperature control specialist, ICS Cool Energy, is advising healthcare facilities to invest in adiabatic coolers rather than industrial cooling towers, claiming the former ‘eliminate the risk of Legionella contamination threat, and have a third of the running costs’.
The company said: “Adiabatic coolers consume 0.25% of the water, being designed to pulse as often as necessary, greatly reducing water consumption and running costs. A UV system supplied as standard ensures the main water feed is clean, killing 99.99+ per cent of Legionella bacteria.” The company says adiabatic coolers rely on mechanical cooling, supported by ‘free cooling’ for most of the year, meaning the adiabatic spray system is potentially only used for 3 per cent of the time. ICS added: “A typical adiabatic cooler, cooling process water from 35°C to 30°C in standard ambient conditions, would typically see an annual evaporative water consumption of around 56 m3, with an additional 14 m3 for regular purges. An open circuit cooling tower, conversely, relies solely on latent heat removal during water evaporation for its heat dissipation. The latent heat of evaporation of water is 2,260 kj/kg, so, for every kW of heat removed from the circulating water, 1.6 g of the spray water must be evaporated. Users also need to bleed off a similar amount of water to avoid residual solids being left in the cooling tower base tank. “Using the same example, this equates to annual water usage for the cooling tower of 27,955 m3 – 40,000% of the equivalent adiabatic cooler”
