Extend the Lifespan of Cooling Tower Equipment: The Advantage of Traveling Cooling Tower Screens

Water towers are critical pieces of infrastructure for any industrial facility. While their purpose is essential to the efficiency and efficacy of any operation, downtime for maintenance can impact both of these goals, as well as your bottom line. However, with the best cooling tower screens, you can mitigate downtime for repairs and reduce, if not eliminate, the amount of time and resources needed for maintenance. Here is some information about cooling tower maintenance and how Vari-Flow screens can help keep your cooling towers up, running, and thriving.  

What are the Benefits of Cooling Tower Efficiency?

Efficient cooling towers are essential in providing the large-scale heat transfer needed to cool the water. The cooling process’ most critical aspect is the heat exchanger. 

It needs to provide optimal performance for the rest of the cooling tower cycle to work its best. 

When debris enters these components, it compromises pumps, exchangers, and other downstream systems. Cooling tower screens are designed to protect these apparatuses. 

How Do Clogged Heat Exchangers in Cooling Towers Create Problems?

Heat exchangers allow heat to pass from the cold water flows and second heat transfer fluid. When debris enters the cold-water basin, it can block the flow of cooling water, making it difficult to transfer the heat. Larger amounts of debris create more significant issues in terms of performance and efficiency. A less than efficient cooling tower can quickly create other problems in the facility, causing costly downtime and expensive repairs, replacement, and maintenance.  

Why are Traveling Cooling Tower Screens Beneficial?

When cooling towers are shut down for cleaning or replacing screens, it can significantly add to operational costs. It used to be that this was a necessary burden as stationary cooling tower screens were used for years. When these screens are removed for cleaning, all of the debris they were holding can enter the cooling tower system, causing damage to other components.  

Traveling water screens eliminate this problem as well as the manpower and resources needed to clean and maintain them. Traveling screens are equipped with a mesh belt that rotates and lifts debris to a series of nozzles that spray off the belt and deposit the debris into a trough, keeping the screens consistently clean and debris out of the basin and the rest of the downstream infrastructure.

The ability of the Vari-Flow sump screens to be effortlessly cleaned means that the critical components within a cooling tower stay protected. Vari-Flow products reduce the overall costs of operation while mitigating the risk and cost of expensive repair and replacement, in addition to costly downtime and operational interruption.