Abstract: The United States Department of Defense (DoD) has a spe­cif­ic leg­isla­tive man­date to increase its con­ser­va­tion of water and ener­gy. It also is inter­est­ed in improv­ing the effec­tive­ness of open-loop, cool­ing water treat­ment process­es at its instal­la­tions world­wide, for pur­pos­es of extend­ing the use­ful life of evap­o­ra­tive cool­ing equip­ment and reduc­ing ener­gy use/costs. A Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) was approved to demon­strate that, with­out using chem­i­cal addi­tives, a capac­i­tor-based water treat­ment sys­tem is capa­ble of (1) pro­vid­ing equiv­a­lent pro­tec­tion to a chem­i­cal treat­ment pro­gram in pre­vent­ing scale, cor­ro­sion, and bio-foul­ing; (2) allow­ing cool­ing sys­tems to be oper­at­ed in an enhanced water con­ser­va­tion mode; (3) deliv­er­ing mea­sur­able reduc­tions in water usage over con­ven­tion­al meth­ods; and (4) pro­vid­ing con­trol, mon­i­tor­ing, and wire­less data trans­fer via the Internet. Results doc­u­ment­ed in the sub­se­quent demon­stra­tion and eval­u­a­tion project showed the tech­nol­o­gy was able to meet every objec­tive and also was able to deliv­er a 20% reduc­tion in cool­ing water use over stan­dard chem­i­cal treat­ment meth­ods. Application of this tech­nol­o­gy would allow the DoD to (1) reduce chem­i­cal usage, expo­sure, and dis­pos­al expens­es; (2) con­serve water and ener­gy; (3) facil­i­tate water re-use; and (4) meet new goals for con­ser­va­tion of resources.

To read more, click here to link to the Army Corps of Engineers pub­lished study