U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Engineering and Construction Bulletin

Subject: Non-Chemical Treatment of Cooling Tower Water
Applicability: Directive and Guidance

Non-chem­i­cal treat­ment of cool­ing tow­er water has been found to be a viable option for many projects. Significant water and cost sav­ings can be real­ized depend­ing on the projects cool­ing sys­tems size, amount of year­ly oper­at­ing time for the sys­tem and con­di­tion of the make-up water. There are var­i­ous types of non-chem­i­cal treat­ment such as: hydro­dy­nam­ic cav­i­ta­tion, pulsed and sta­t­ic elec­tric field, ultra-son­ic, and mag­net­ic. CERL has per­formed a study on Zeta Rod Water Management Systems, a  type of non-chem­i­cal treat­ment (High Voltage Capacitance Based – HVCB) used on the cool­ing sys­tems at four U.S mil­i­tary bases. The bases select­ed had a wide range of make-up water use and cli­mat­ic con­di­tions. This sys­tem oper­at­ed by installing insu­lat­ed high volt­age elec­trodes into the cool­ing tow­er pip­ing cre­at­ing a strong elec­tro­sta­t­ic field in the water stream.

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