Saving Water, Sewer, and Chemical Costs:

How the TenFiveSixty Condo Association Earned "cool cash" from their air conditioning system . . .

Like many large buildings in the Los Angeles area, the Ten Five Sixty Condo Association has an expensive air conditioning system. The system consists of a cooling tower which provides air conditioning for all of the tenants of this luxurious 21-story Wilshire Blvd. location.

Ray Adkins, Chief Engineer, has extensive facility management experience and has been with the Ten Five Sixty building for three years. During his tenure, he has completed many maintenance retrofit and modernization programs in an effort to save the condo association money. Recently, the association decided to make the cooling tower system their next target of opportunity as these systems cost thousands of dollars yearly to operate and the association had made a substantial investment in the current equipment.

To keep the cooling tower equipment clean, standard operating procedures included the routine use of very expensive, toxic chemicals. Furthermore, large amounts of water were used to keep the system running well, resulting in big water and sewer bills. Finally, regular maintenance of this equipment was frequent, laborious, and costly. Obviously, they needed to find a better method to maintain the cooling tower more efficiently and economically!

Fortunately, Mr. Adkins learned about a new 'cutting edge' technology for commercial and industrial water treatment. It involves the use of the Zeta Rod System, a recent invention which has proven to be very effective for use in cooling towers to increase operating efficiency, saving water and energy consumption without the use of chemical additives.

The Zeta Rod System comprises a unique electrode and power supply that form an electrostatic field within the water system. The field elevates the surface charge of particulates including inorganic and biological matter naturally occurring water. These minute particles now repel each other and will not form scale and biofilm which cause corrosion, impede heat transfer, and foul the water system.

In March of 1997, a Zeta Rod System was installed in Ten Five Sixty's 185-ton cooling tower system. It was Mr. Adkins' job to monitor the results. "Along with the maintenance staff, I was curious to see what effect this new technology would have, and I am responsible for this very expensive equipment. We visually inspected the machinery and monitored the water quality daily. We even installed new meters on the tower to check water flows. To give the Zeta Rod a tough challenge, we eliminated our regular chemical treatment program entirely for the tower and greatly increased the operating TDS." (TDS refers to 'total dissolved solids' which is a measure of the amount of particulate matter in the water. It is typical to remove dissolved solids by "bleeding" water from the system, replacing it with fresh water. TDS is increased by recirculating the water in the cooling tower rather than dumping it down the sewer.)

In normal circumstances, these combined events would lead to rapid scaling, biological growth and decreased system performance. According to Ray Adkins, the no such problems occurred - in fact quite the opposite. Mr. Adkins commented on the results after the Zeta Rod system had been in operation for a few months: "The cooling tower system has been very clean and free of scale. We have found no new build-ups. We are now running in a highly efficient manner."

The dollar savings from their Zeta Rod installation were three-fold. First, several thousand dollars of chemical additive costs were completely eliminated. Second, the system was running at higher TDS levels, which means less water running down the sewer. Ray was quite excited: "According to my water and sewer bills and my meters and calculations, we have already saved enough in water and sewer costs alone during these past eight months, to pay for the Zeta Rod System. We have also avoided the usual sewer surcharge fees for hazardous wastes, as our water from the tower is showing no chemical residues."

Finally, the maintenance expenses on the cooling tower for the Ten Five Sixty Condo Association were reduced substantially as well. Mr. Adkins explained it this way: "Cleaning the tower used to take a full eight hours and a lot of very unpleasant work. Our recent cleaning took less than three hours and was much easier. Our building maintenance crew really likes the new system because they no longer have to work with toxic chemicals. There is much less biological growth which may harbor harmful bacteria, and no foul odor."

As a direct result of the success of this initial application, the Ten Five Sixty staff will be installing a second Zeta Rod for the building's main water supply which will protect expensive booster pumps and reduce scale on all plumbing fixtures in the building. "This will really make the tenants happy," said Adkins.

Like the Ten Five Sixty Condo Association, you can use your cooling tower system as a source for some 'cool cash' if you are willing to explore available electrotechnology and consider the wave of the future. . . which will absolutely require that we save water and energy and be more careful with chemical residues. Capacitor-based technology is here to stay and an environmentally friendly alternative!