by Hector Cavazos
Given this commercial opening we are offered a variety of options, some good and others not so much, but all are offered in the market as the best, always talking about their advantages.
This is for me a great opportunity to comment on some of the points that should be analyzed at the time of acquiring a cooling tower.
1. Good price: I do not mean looking for a cheap team if you intend to economize, or pretend that if it is expensive it is always good. At a good price I mean that we get the best in return for our investment. In the United States, the phrase Best Value is common. A variety of cooling towers have come to the market with a considerable economic initial investment, in this case it is advisable to also analyze the efficiency, the cost of operation (electricity consumption and water consumption), as well as the cost and availability of spare parts.
2. Minimum and easy maintenance: We all know that the maintenance department always has a lot of work and what it seeks is to be able to dedicate itself to attending to emergencies and equipment that require continuous maintenance. The Cooling Tower can be equipment they almost never find out about or it can be the maintenance department's nightmare. To avoid this, it is advisable to look from the beginning for a tower that requires minimal maintenance. The main factors that the tower must have to minimize and facilitate maintenance are :
•Large inspection doors that are easy to disassemble. Where you have access to the interior of the tower, either for inspection or maintenance
• Direct coupling of blades to motor. Eliminate transmissions that always require a lot of maintenance and increase the risk of an unplanned shutdown.
• Complete manufacture in anticorrosive materials and without interior metal structure. Fiberglass reinforced polyester resin (FRP) is the most recommended material for the application. Avoid metal components as much as possible.
•No internal components in motion (except the fan). The fewer moving internal components you have, the less maintenance it requiresFilling in PVC Packages – (not on loose sheets or PVC rolls)The easier it is to disassemble and assemble the filler, the easier and simpler maintenance is.
3. Durability: Cooling towers are regularly installed in hard-to-reach places, in which replacement is difficult and expensive. It is important to acquire a tower with the longest possible service life, and this depends mainly on the materials of manufacture. Fiberglass reinforced polyester resin (FRP) is the material with the longest service life in the manufacture of cooling towers, which are equipment that are installed outdoors, work with water and are regularly exposed to chemicals.
There are several options of cooling towers commercially called fiberglass, but not all have a long service life, some have an interior metal structure and this considerably decreases the useful life, in addition there are several types of polyester and fiberglass resins some with greater strength and better quality than others. To avoid the purchase of a fiberglass cooling tower with dubious quality in its components, it is important to know as much as possible the manufacturer so that this is not simply a tower marketed by economic.
4. Practice: It is convenient that the cooling tower is compact for the transfer, the more armed it can be transported, the better and the lower the risk of having unpleasant surprises when joining it, it is also convenient that it be light in its weight in operation.{mospagebreak}
5. Guaranteed thermal capacity: It is very important to make sure that the cooling tower that is purchased is of the capacity that is required, and for such a matter there is a worldwide certification that guarantees the thermal capacity of the cooling towers. With this certification the client protects himself from the fact that the tower does not meet his requirement and that the air conditioning equipment or the process that is being cooled cannot operate at its full capacity. This certification is granted by the CTI (Cooling Technology Institute, www.cti.org), which gives the manufacturer a certification number on approved models after a series of tests and actual measurements in cooling towers operating with thermal load.
A requirement in the Certification is that the manufacturer provides brochures where the tower selection tables are integrated and the customer can confirm that the equipment will meet the required capacity.
It is important to clarify that the certification has nothing to do with quality, it can be a cooling tower certified by the CTI and of low quality. The CTI only validates the thermal capacity of the tower in relation to what is offered in the brochures by the manufacturer, that is, it verifies that the tower gives the capacity that the manufacturer says in its brochures.
6. Service: The last, but not the least important, is the Service, because any equipment can fail, regardless of whether it is due to mishandling or a failure in the equipment itself; the important thing is the speed and availability offered by the manufacturer. The cooling towers operate with very delicate and expensive equipment, the manufacturer must respond immediately to any requirement, it is advisable to evaluate the attitude of both the person representing the manufacturer and the organization that supports it. Incredibly there are companies in the market in general that even from the quote give bad service. Imagine if they are like this to quote, as they will be at the time of requesting support for some emergency.
* Commercial Director - REYMSA Cooling Towers. If you wish you can write to
[email protected]
