If you use a water cooling tower for your facility or equipment, blowdown is a normal part of maintenance. This process and the resulting wastewater are also called bleed-off. Here’s what you need to know about blowdown and how you can optimize this process.

What Is Blowdown?

Water cooling towers operate through evaporation. As water evaporates, the minerals from that water stay in the system.

Over time, the mineral concentration gets higher and higher. Blowdown means letting some of the mineral-rich water out of the system and replacing it with fresh water that has a lower mineral content.

Why Is It Necessary?

The higher the mineral content inside your water cooling tower, the shorter its life span will be. The minerals in the water solidify into a coating of scale inside the system, which narrows pipes, freezes mechanical parts, and increases corrosion. The minerals can also form sediment that may clog the system.

While there are some scale prevention treatments you can add to the water to slow this process, they don’t prevent it completely, and a high enough mineral concentration will still create scale. Flushing out some of the used water and replacing it with fresh water lowers the total mineral concentration in the system to safe levels.

How Does It Work?

Blowdown can be either manual or automated. First, you’ll test the mineral content of the water, or have a sensor in place to monitor it. When the mineral content reaches a certain level, a technician or the automated system activates blowdown.

Some of the water is released from the system. You may dispose of the used water, or you may keep it to treat and reuse it. Treating the water in-house increases water efficiency and is safer for the environment, while sending the water to a local water treatment facility is often easier, especially for small operations.

If you want to improve the efficiency of your water cooling tower and develop a system for your blowdown, contact Western Environmental Management. Based in Carlsbad, NM, and serving Eddy County for over 35 years, they are a distributor of SUEZ Water Technologies and Solutions, and also offer specialty water treatment applications. To schedule a consultation, call (575) 885-5709 or reach out online.