Plants Can Save Up to $450,000 Annually With On-Line Monitoring of Cooling Water

Oct. 15, 2013
Solution designed to ensure cooling water availability, maintain water quality and reduce chemical costs for process plants.

Emerson Process Management has introduced an integrated cooling tower monitoring solution as the latest addition to its Essential Asset Monitoring capabilities. The new solution monitors the water cycle of the cooling tower that services process plants, helping operators ensure that makeup water and chemical costs are optimized, while minimizing scaling and fouling of cooling water exchangers facility-wide.

The solution provides a set of pre-engineered applications for 24/7 online monitoring and analysis of the cooling tower and its related equipment health. It uses wireless instrument networks with existing wired instruments.

Since chemicals, additives and fresh water treatment are some of the largest variable costs for cooling-tower operation, optimizing purge and makeup rates is important.  Proper control of water cycles and chemicals to maintain water quality requires on-line measurement of water quality. Many plants operate based on daily or even weekly analysis of their cooling water. On-line monitoring of cooling water quality can result in lower makeup water and chemical costs, as well as elimination of fouling events in the exchanger circuit.

Emerson estimates that on-line monitoring and analysis of a large, 350,000 gpm cooling water system can add up to $450,000 in savings annually due to reductions in lost production, lower energy bills and reduced chemical and water usage.

Related Content