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Mining Gold from your Cooling Water System
Abstract
You may be missing on a fabulous opportunity
to save on operating costs in your cooling water
system.
Cooling water systems are designed to handle
peak loads in summer, but as cooling tower water or
river water gets colder during the colder months of
the year, the volume of water circulated can be
reduced while still rejecting the same amount of
BTUs.
Advances in variable speed drives and controls
technology have opened the door for reductions in
flow to be accomplished on a consistent basis. These
flow reductions result in large energy savings due to
the pump affinity laws. As the speed of a pump is
reduced, the Horsepower is reduced to the cube of
the RPM and even small reductions in flow generate
big savings in energy. A 20% reduction in flow
generates almost 50% in electricity savings.
Energy opportunities are demonstrated with real
project examples as well as general theoretical
calculations. Project savings can usually be
generated with a minimal investment of time and
effort.
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Citation
Mendez, T. (2007). Mining Gold from your Cooling Water System. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /91049.