Broken Cooling Tower Fan Blades

When a cooling tower fan blade breaks it can create significant damage and/or injury. When one blade breaks it puts the fan out of balance. The combination of high speed and lack of balance can cause other blades to break, the shaft to bend, and/or gear box damage. The broken blades in the picture came out of a 500 ton tower installed at grade level. Both blades broke and shot out through the side of the fan shroud. Fortunately, there were no personnel in the area at the time of the failure.

Griswold SBC Non Chemical Water Treatment Device

Here is a picture of an installed Griswold SBC Non Chemical Device (NCD) for water treatment. It is claimed to prevent scale and eliminate biofilm in cooling towers and closed loops. Traditional water treatment chemistry is still being utilized to treat the system. The system volume is 65,000 gallons with a constant 42 gpm make up rate.

The unit claims to treat the water through "electronic resonance". The advertising brochure claims that the treatment chamber "uses less energy that a standard 100 W light bulb". Who in the scientific community can explain how there is enough energy to perform the tasks this unit claims it can do? If you choose to defend the unit please list your credentials.

Wasted Resources

During a recent central plant survey I came across these boiler blowdown controllers. Both were controlling on line boilers with similar run time, load, and make up water characteristics. The controller on the right is in alarm due to low conductivity. Unfortunately, the plant operator hadn't noticed the alarm. No corrective action was taken. Running the boiler in this condition is costly. It wastes water, chemical, and electricity. The water treatment cost associated with running a poorly controlled boiler can easily be double the cost of running a similar program with good controls. If you find that your water, chemical, and electrical costs have suddenly increased it may be time to revisit the control parameters of your water treatment program.

Chemical Induced Corrosion

The nipple in this condenser water return line is experiencing severe corrosion. The cause of this corrosion is chemical. Rather then feed chemical through an injection quill an attempt was made to feed directly into an existing valve. Feeding chemical in this manner can be very harsh on the surrounding metallurgy. Although this was a quick and cheap install the long term reliability of the system has been compromised.