New Cooling Tower Technology

We often wonder if it is better to replace our old systems or get a new one. This is the same for commercial buildings, whose HVAC systems are huge investments that can require a lot of time, money and manpower to replace. But the people in the LAX Airport Center office were grateful that they decided to upgrade their cooling tower. They upgraded to engineered plastic cooling towers from their old galvanized metal towers, which was great for them when the heat wave hit. Here is more info from HVAC News:

"We felt that a newer type of cooling tower, designed with a shell of engineered plastic, would be more efficient and less maintenance-intensive for the application than simply replacing the old injector system with a new one," McGuire says.

 The engineered plastic cooling tower, innovated by Delta Cooling Towers (Rockaway, NJ), has been used in industrial and commercial applications of many types because of its inherent resistance to corrosives as well as high-efficiency features.

Because the 5777 West Century Boulevard building was located near Los Angeles International Airport , it was exposed to the corrosive effects of industrial effluents, jet fuels and the nearby Pacific salt air. Those corrosive effects as well as prevailing high humidity no doubt were contributing to the increasingly waning performance of the building's old injector cooling tower system. McGuire was convinced that the Delta plastic model would be best for this application.

"I like the Delta design," he says. "The double-wall plastic shell is impervious to UV light, pH or corrosives, so it's very low in maintenance. The tower operates well in high humidity. The shell has a 15-year warranty, which is unique in the cooling tower industry. Also, I think it's got strong price advantages."

The model that McGuire recommended was a single, 500-ton Delta TM series cooling tower to replace the old injector tower. The high-efficiency TM Series is an induced draft, counter flow design that is modular, and capable of providing from 250 to over 2,000 cooling tons.

 The cooling tower fan runs off a variable-speed drive, so the fan runs slower, consumes less energy and creates less wear and tear on the motors. In office building applications, the variable-speed fan gradually starts in the morning as the weather warms, typically running at 30 percent until it shuts off in the evening.

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