Educational facilities—primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities and trade schools—must make the most out of every dollar. But did you know? Due to inefficiency, cooling can be one of the highest-cost operations that educational buildings face. Temperature control isn’t optional, and thousands are spent every year on water and power for environmental control. Unfortunately, these dollars can literally drift away on the wind from inefficient cooling equipment.
Tower Tech modular cooling towers help educational facilities maximize their return on investment through low maintenance, a long service life and sustainably efficient operations that slash annual bills.
Cooling Tower Challenges for EducationMost cooling-related challenges are universal to all applications: cost, safety, longevity. The importance and impact of these challenges is what varies by use case.
These are some of the top challenges for cooling towers serving educational facilities:
Efficiency and resource management. Most schools have tight operational budgets and, especially for higher education, often also have sustainability goals. Cooling towers, however, conventionally draw substantial power and consume gallons of water per minute. And a conventional tower design assumes a certain amount of water waste is inevitable due to splashing and evaporation from the basin and from drift, or the mist of water and chemicals that are expelled from a running tower. These factors can mean hundreds of gallons of chemically treated water wasted each day.
Minimizing maintenance. Cooling towers require specialized maintenance. On a school’s team of maintenance and custodial workers, perhaps one member of staff is trained to service cooling towers. More often, cooling tower maintenance is contracted out. Whether done by in-house staff or a contractor, this means added expense with few resources. Too often, the actual result is a less-frequent maintenance and cleaning schedule, which can allow the growth of biofilm and risks of Legionella, in addition to risking downtime. Tower Tech reduces the maintenance requirements which relieves time demands that can be allocated to other responsibilities.
Legionella risk management. When a Legionnaire’s disease outbreak occurs, too often a cooling tower turns out to be the culprit. This is because conventional cooling towers are designed with an open basin. The combination of water and sunshine fosters the growth of biofilm, a sludgy substance that provides ideal conditions for bacterial growth. Legionella, the bacterium behind Legionnaire’s disease, loves biofilm and thrives in cooling towers. Frequent, thorough cleaning and maintenance can lower these risks, but most facilities—especially in education—don’t have the budget or time to dedicate full-time resources to keeping towers in pristine, completely biofilm-free condition.
Maximizing limited space. Especially for single-building educational facilities, there isn’t much room to spare. Conventional cooling towers are roof-mounted or are located on the grounds near a building. They tend to be heavy, which requires special reinforcement to support, and most designs need significant free-board clearance, usually double the louver height (12 to 18 feet), to deliver sufficient airflow. A single tower will take up a larger footprint on an already limited amount of space.
Handling variable loads. Schools are not 24/7/365 facilities. Except in special circumstances, most will be occupied five days a week during daytime hours for nine to ten months of the year (or less in cooler climates). While it would be tempting to just shut down their cooling tower when buildings are unoccupied, this is impractical. Most cooling towers would suffer damage without a meticulous shutdown procedure and winterization, which is appropriate only for longer-term shutdowns. Conventional towers also do not often have the ability to run on a partial cell. The option is to keep towers running at minimum capacity and use water, chemicals and energy even when buildings are unoccupied.
Integration with central operations plant. A maintenance person’s nightmare is mission-critical equipment that runs on its own, separate system instead of integrating with central operations. Each separate platform adds risk and complexity, and poor or no integration with the central plant means more work to ensure peak performance and avoid missing downtime.
Noise and drift control. One reason cooling towers are often placed on the roof is to reduce noise pollution. The large fans on these machines produce a droning sound, and in an open-basin design, water splashing contributes further noise. Cooling towers can further impact environmental comfort through drift and splashing. Standing close enough to most cooling towers, you’ll feel the drift mist, and large puddles tend to form around tower basins as water splashes in (and out).
Tower Tech modular cooling towers have an industry-best total cost of ownership and address these challenges particular to educational facilities.
Tower Tech’s core commitment is Sustainable Efficiency, prioritizing resource management without sacrificing quality. Our modular cooling towers are made from Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP), an inherently corrosion-resistant composite that has a lower cradle-to-gate carbon footprint than steel and a decades-long lifespan. With an industry-best drift rate, Tower Tech’s design also minimizes maintenance while making the most of every gallon of water, batch of chemicals and kilowatt of electricity.
Tower Tech’s signature upside-down design eliminates both side louvers and open basins, keeping water and sunlight separate. This design slashes Legionella risks with the added benefit of maximizing limited space. With a much smaller freeboard space requirement and a much lighter total weight than metal, Tower Tech’s FRP cooling towers can be placed nearly side-by-side, and more units can fit in the same footprint of fewer metal units.
With multiple, smaller, bottom-mounted fans, Tower Tech’s design allows for lower minimum capacity operation. It also allows the tower to be produced in a split-cell design, ideal for variable loads. A split cell design allows the tower to be divided into separate sections, each capable of independent operation. This allows the tower to run only at the required capacity without harming the tower. A split-cell design is ideal for educational facilities that operate on a reduced load when buildings are unoccupied.
Tower Tech towers integrate with central operations plant software and require no special operating system or technician to run. They have an industry-standard fan noise ratings but eliminate the splashing water noise. Tower Tech also has an industry-leading drift rating of 0.0004%, a reduction of up to 92% of the industry standard 0.005% rating. This not only reduces chemical and water waste but also significantly reduces the drift mist that will impact the surrounding areas, like parking lots or playgrounds.
With savings represented across the board, from resources to maintenance, Tower Tech modular cooling towers are a smart investment for educational buildings.