The Vulcan water conditioner is an excellent choice for cooling towers and chillers. This unique solution lowers operating costs and increases the life of equipment. It reduces maintenance, water consumption, and the need for chemicals. The Vulcan water treatment system itself is maintenance-free, chemical-free, nontoxic, and installation does not require system shutdown. The effects are truly impressive and seeing is believing.
Ackuritlabs, Inc. installed a Vulcan S250 on a 10 inch line feeding twin cooling towers located at the FAMU/FSU College of Engineering. Our technician took pictures and measurements prior to the installation and then regularly for 6 weeks after the Vulcan was in place. The pictures are below, but first there is a little history on this particular site.
The maintenance for these cooling towers previously involved continuous injection of descaling chemical cleansers. The use of these cleansers was discontinued over a year prior to the installation of the Vulcan. In that time, the cooling tower flutes became encrusted with both scale and biofilm. Throughout the time period described below, there were no cleaning procedures in place with these cooling towers besides the treatment provided by the Vulcan.
Between the time of the installation on July 16th and examination on August 1st, the green biofilm had begun to recede and gradually disappear.
The next visit was about 3 weeks after the installation, on August 9th. At that point, the green biofilm had been further reduced and the scale deposits had begun to separate from the flutes in coin-sized flakes.
By August 20th, about a month after installation, the green biofilm had almost completely disappeared from the surfaces in contact with the Vulcan-treated water. The flakes of scale previously observed had fallen off in most places. The cooling tower flute surface area covered with scale deposits had been decreased by over 60%.
The following two pictures are of the inside of one of the cooling towers on October 30, 2013 (about 3 and a half months after Vulcan water treatment began). Very little scale remains, and we are very optimistic about continued improvement with this application.
In addition to these observations, water quality measurements were also obtained from each cooling tower and are summarized in the following charts. The Vulcan does NOT change the water quality beyond its propensity to cause scale buildup. As illustrated below, the pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen level, and turbidity remained relatively constant during observation from before the installation to over a month after. Temperature is included, because of its affect on the other measurements and correlates with any slight fluctuations observed.
