This dirty cooling tower shows how nutrients, airborne dirt and debris accumulate over time and attach themselves to the system. Deposits cause blockage and corrosion. This impairs the operating efficiency and can lead to significant damage, even possible failure of the system. When a system is neglected or not cleaned properly, motors burn out. Sometimes the damage is so severe that towers need to be rebuilt.
Another critically important reason to have cooling towers properly serviced and cleaned is to prevent the spread of bacteria, specifically the common bacteria, Legionella Pneumophilia Bacillus, which causes Legionnaires’ disease. (All cases of the disease have been attributed to man-made environments.) Legionella, which is found in moist environments and water sources, can spread over a vast area due to drift (aerosols) carrying the bacteria from the tower. A thorough manual washout is recommended every six months to avoid problems encountered with cooling towers.
To clean the dirty system pictured above and dozens of others in a service project for a large county school system, our technicians used a number of processes including high-volume pressure washing (pictured below), scraping, vacuuming and brushing (tubular shafts in the chiller head).