Sandia has more than 50 Cooling-Towers.

Cooling-towers water consumption accounts for approximately 26% of the total at Sandia/New Mexico.

A cooling-tower is a large evaporative cooler, similar in function to a swamp cooler for a residential house, used in building chilled water systems. Warm water flows down fill media and air is brought in through the use of a fan. Some water evaporates, leaving cooler water behind. This cooler water now goes to the heat load, typically a condenser unit (where it cools/condenses the refrigerant used to chill water used for the building cooling) or directly to cooling process equipment.

As more cooled water is lost through evaporation, some water must be added to replace, or make-up, the portion of the flow that evaporates. Because evaporation consists of pure water, the concentration of dissolved minerals and other solids in circulating water will tend to increase unless some means of dissolved-solids control, such as blow-down, is provided. Some water is also lost by droplets being carried out with the exhaust air (drift), but this is typically reduced to a very small amount by installing baffle-like devices, called drift eliminators, to collect the droplets. The make-up amount must equal the total of the evaporation, blow-down, drift, and other water losses such as wind blowout and leakage, to maintain a steady water level.

Sandia/New Mexico has installed water meters on most of the make-up and bleed-off lines which are used for water consumption tracking and chemical control. The goal of Sandia/New Mexico is to increase the cycles of concentration through advances in chemical and/or physical treatment, modifications, and maintenance.

Back