Save money and chill out
With warner weather just around the corner, it’s not too soon to start prepping your cooling system for another active season. From cleaning debris from your coils to ensuring tubes are free of mineral deposits, maintaining your cooling equipment will not only protect you from the heat, but also your wallet.
If companies understood how much money they were losing due to efficiency loss and damage caused by water scale and other mineral deposits, a comprehensive preventative maintenance program would be implemented immediately.
Take for example, chillers. They not only represent a capital investment, but also a major contributor to energy costs. Maintaining clean chiller tubes is vital to reliable, efficient equipment operation. Water scale acts as an insulating barrier impeding efficient heat transfer effectively making the equipment work harder, in turn, consuming greater amounts of energy [click here to see the February 2013 edition of APEX Monthly for energy consumption/cost-savings chart].
Water scale can also create under-deposit corrosion of the tube alloy. Internal tube fouling can be detrimental to heat transfer, reducing the efficiency of condensing and resulting in higher pressure and more strain on your equipment. This corrosion can also create tube breach leaks, resulting in the loss of refrigerant and compounding your operational losses.
The most effective way to ensure that tubes achieve their full life expectancy and maximum heat transfer efficiency is to keep them clean [with RYDLYME, of course]. Eliminating mineral deposits from the tubes so the bare metal is exposed again restores optimal heat transfer. Essentially, this gives the chiller a new life cycle, as protective oxide coatings quickly rebuild themselves to re-passivate the cleaned tubes.
Chiller operators should document daily chiller performance with design and start-up data to detect problems or inefficient control set points. This process allows the operator to chart a history of operating conditions, which can be reviewed and analyzed to determine trends and provide warnings of potential problems. Upon daily charting of the chiller’s operation, the operator will notice gradual increases in condensing pressure. Early identification of the fouling characteristics will help determine the frequency of cleaning required.
The use of safe chemical cleaning technologies should be preferred when compared to mechanical methods. Aside from the risk of damaging components and the equipment itself, mechanical cleaning methods (e.g. tube brushing) may not effectively remove all of the deposits in the equipment. A thin film of water scale or even stubborn areas of build-up left behind will continue to impede the equipment’s operating efficiency and allow for faster growth of future deposits.
Energy costs are expensive enough. Keep your equipment clean to ensure maximum efficiency and equipment life, while decreasing operating and energy costs.
Clean towers without shutdown
Scaling within a cooling tower can restrict the water distribution of spray nozzles, reduce the water flow through the openings of a hot deck and restrict the air flow within the tower. All of these conditions will result in diminished cooling capacity and inefficient operation of the associated equipment on the cooling tower system.
A cooling tower system can be cleaned by adding RYDLYME to the tower basin, thus allowing the towers transfer pump to circulate the solution throughout the tower and the equipment it is cooling. This can all be accommodated during the normal operation of the cooling tower without shutdown!
RYDLYME improves efficiency on cooling tower
A 35-ton cooling tower at a major college had compressors operating at more than 260psi just to maintain a 70°F water temperature due to heavy water scale. RYDLYME was put into the system to dissolve the scaling.
Solution
• 55 gallons of RYDLYME circulated for 4 hours via inline pumps then flushed with water
• Cleaning was done while system was in operation!
Results
• Compressors are only operating at 165psi to maintain the 70°F water temperature!
• RYDLYME is now part of the cooling tower’s annual maintenance schedule
• Maintenance personnel found additional uses for RYDLYME, including cleaning: steam lines, humidifier at the fieldhouse and plate and frame heat exchangers
Cool air and quiet, just what the doctor ordered
A hospital was experiencing significant cooling problems with its 350-ton chiller and cooling tower due to severe scaling to the point where the lowest temperature they could achieve was only 76°F. The chiller was constantly running and making so much noise that the staff moved blankets onto the unit just to keep the sound from disturbing the patients.
Solution
• 220 gallons of RYDLYME circulated for 5 hours via inline pumps then flushed with water
• Cleaning was done while system was in operation!
Results
• The chiller returned to cycling properly and no longer making noise; tower flow returned to normal
• System was also able to provide desired temperatures without straining, or constantly running helping to decrease energy usage
RYDLYME decreases temperatures by 10°F!
An office building was experiencing inadequate cooling due to severe scale buildup in its 125-ton Trane chiller. The Trane service technician turned to RYDLYME for a solution to the cooling problem.
Solution
• 30 gallons of RYDLYME circulated for 4 hours
Results
• Approach temperatures went from 13°F to 3°F!
• Trane technician extremely pleased with result
• Office employees were once again cool and productive
To the victor go the coils… and more
How important is keeping the coils in your AC system clean? If money is a central component to your business or life, then it is extremely important. Just as water scale and other mineral deposits reduce efficiency and increase operating costs in chillers and other water-side equipment, dirt and other contaminants do the same thing to AC systems. Fouled coils in an AC system can increase energy usage by more than 35% and reduce cooling capacity by as much as 30%!
In addition to energy usage, accumulation of contaminants on coils can lead to costly repairs or replacement. Fouled AC coils limit the volume of air reaching the condenser, which can lead to the unit freezing and eventual breakdown.
Regularly scheduled coil cleanings can not only help improve energy usage, lower operating costs and extend the life of your system, they can help maintain healthy air-quality. As dirt, dust, moisture and other contaminants accumulate, the coils absorb them as air flows through it. As a result, the coils becoming a breeding ground for bacteria and mold which can threaten the indoor air quality.
Keep in mind there are several coil cleaners on the market. Some may only be used on certain materials, while others are limited to outdoor or indoor use only. There are also “green” coil cleaners, as well as a variety of application methods. Do research into which coil cleaner may be best for your system and needs, as well as contact your HVAC service provider with questions.
HVAC technicians turn to RYDALL CC
The service technicians at a major HVAC company decided to put RYDALL CC to the test against the coil cleaners they had been using for years. These seasoned technicians were skeptical, but agreed to the test it when they learned that RYDALL CC can be used both indoors and outdoors, will not harm roofing materials and is biodegradable!
Solution
• RYDALL CC diluted (2:1), foamed onto the coil surface, allowed to penetrate into the coil for approximately 20 minutes and rinsed off with water.
Results
• The technicians loved the performance and versatility of RYDALL CC and now use it on all their coil cleaning jobs!
Benefits of using RYDALL CC Coil Cleaner
- NON-HAZARDOUS & NON-TOXIC!
- BIODEGRADABLE!
- FOOD-GRADE CERTIFIED!
- USE INDOORS & OUTDOORS!
- SAFE ON MEMBRANE ROOFING & OTHER MATERIALS!