Location: Pennsylvania | Project: Health System Campus Cooling | Product: TTXR Modular Cooling Towers
Since its founding in 1915, Geisinger Medical Center has expanded to over 100 locations across Central and Northeastern Pennsylvania, providing healthcare for over half a million patients. The desire to eliminate downtime and risks of Legionella led Geisinger to Tower Tech, a relationship that has flourished for over two decades.
Geisinger faced three major cooling challenges. First, healthcare systems are a type of “mission-critical” industry, meaning downtime isn’t just costly and inconvenient; it can cause harm to those inside the building. Conventional cooling tower designs present a risk, as they rely on one to three very large fans. If even one of these fans go offline, the tower cannot operate, and it may be days before the appropriate equipment can be brought in to safely change the heavy fan.
Second, healthcare systems are held to even higher standards for the prevention of Legionnaire’s disease and other waterborne illnesses. Cooling towers are a leading culprit behind Legionnaire’s outbreaks, as their open side louvers provide an ideal breeding ground for Legionella. Remediation requires substantial biocide use.
This relates to the third challenge: In addition to chemical use, cooling towers use a substantial amount of water and energy to run. Water is lost via drift, and design can further impact efficiency.
Geisinger Health has too many locations to run to permit risk and waste into their operations. They sought a campus-wide solution that could redefine expectations for cooling tower performance.
In the early 2000s, Geisinger decided to take a chance on a relative newcomer to the cooling tower game, Tower Tech. Tower Tech’s founder, Harold Curtis, had seen all the same issues the Geisinger team were concerned with and designed the TTXR to overcome them. What really drew Geisinger to Tower Tech is the sustainable efficiency of its design: The Geisinger team was impressed with the efficiency and efficacy of the nozzles and fill media coverage, the elimination of the sump and open basin and the exceptional savings on water, energy and chemicals.
“Tower Tech’s design allows me to operate a plant in ways that aren’t even possible with other cooling tower designs.” – Al Neuner, VP Facilities Operations, Geisinger Health System
Tower Tech’s innovative fan design totally changed the game for Geisinger. Because Tower Tech utilizes more, smaller fans, the loss of a single fan only reduces tower capacity by 10-20%. This redundancy keeps operations running while maintenance addresses the offline fan. And by mounting the fans on the bottom of the unit, the Tower Tech design enables faster, safer maintenance.
The TTXR towers met all Geisinger’s needs—elimination of true downtime, minimizing the growth of Legionella and resource savings—and far exceeded their expectations for a true partner in Tower Tech. Geisinger Health’s Tower Tech cooling towers have helped them achieve an Energy Star score of 100, setting a new standard for sustainable efficiency in healthcare. Although acknowledging a higher up-front cost, Geisinger reports that energy and water savings mean their towers have paid for themselves many times over since installation. The partnership and results speak for themselves: Geisinger is now almost a fully Tower Tech operation, having installed 40+ modules that provide 25,000 tons of cooling across eight campuses over the last two decades.
“We’re essentially the benchmark in the country for minimizing energy use in a hospital setting.”
Customer: Geisinger Health System
Location: Multiple locations, including Pennsylvania, USA
Tower Tech Model: TTXL/TTXR
Tower Count: 42 modules
First Installation: 2000