TREATMENTS AND FLUIDS
Water, water everywhere
Much of the cooling in our buildings relies on water, a natural resource that probably isn’t given much thought in day-to-day running. This water has to be in good condition, however, to ensure system effi ciency and prevent breakdown, but the traditional means of ensuring this condition can be extremely wasteful. Steven Booth, managing director at Guardian Water Treatment, looks at how to improve the sustainability of essential water system management and treatment.
W
ater is an essential component of nearly all HVAC systems. While usually readily available in this country, in a resource-stretched world, building services and maintenance engineers should choose sustainable alternatives where possible.
A sustainable approach can sometimes seem at odds with ensuring operational effi ciency, however, particularly when it comes to water systems. For example, pre-commissioning cleaning, the essential process that ensures a water system is clean and contaminant free at the point of handover, accounts for around half of all water wastage in a building’s construction. So what can be done? Poor water condition can lead to corrosion, ineffi ciencies and breakdown – problems that could result in extremely expensive
40 June 2018
repairs and operational downtime. These are risks that no building owner wants to take, particularly for critical infrastructure businesses such as datacentres; the knock-on eff ect of failed cooling in this sort of environment could run into the billions.
Water condition
Pre-commissioning cleaning at the start of a water system’s operational life is the point at which large volumes of water and chemicals are fl ushed through the pipework. While this process of fl ushing cannot be avoided altogether, it can be reduced using advanced fi ltration processes designed to save water and potentially increase the lifespan of pipework – fl ushing itself can cause damage which leads to corrosion.
Flushing can be used at any stage as a way to decontaminate following the identifi cation of a bacterial issue. We sometimes use in-line fi ltration, which retains the existing water in the system, as an alternative to traditional fl ushing on chilled water systems, saving thousands of litres of water. Another benefi t of this technique is that it preserves the existing corrosion inhibitor in the system, eliminating the need for additional chemicals to replenish the system, or the risk of adding fresh aerated water.
The other way to reduce water and chemical wastage is through continuous monitoring. Remote monitoring systems, such as Hevasure, send readings direct to any Internet-enabled device, placing the knowledge fi rmly in the hands of building owners and their maintenance teams.
www.acr-news.com
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