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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

AFCATT (Anti-Fouling Chemical Additive Test Tower)

Technical Report ·
OSTI ID:121538
; ;  [1]
  1. Southern Company Services, Birmingham, AL (United States); and others
Polyvinylchloride (PVC) film-type cellular fill is the fill of choice in replacing cement asbestos board fill in existing cooling towers and in new cooling towers because of its high thermal performance, ease of installation, and low initial cost. However, PVC fill has been found to foul quickly with biological and sediment material, significantly reducing tower performance and the fill`s useful life. The Anti-Fouling Chemical Additives Test Tower (AFCATT) has been build to study accumulation rates of fouling deposits in corrugated PVC film fill and to study methods of cleaning and preventing the fouling deposits. This small mechanical draft cooling tower is located next to the Unit 4 natural draft cooling tower at Georgia Power Company`s Plant Bowen. The once-through mechanical draft tower receives hot water from the condenser and returns the cold water to the basin of the host tower. The pilot tower is divided into four chambers allowing for three different treatment programs and one control to be run simultaneously. PVC fill packs are suspended from load cells to allow the weight of the fill packs to be measured continuously. Six vendors participated in the summer 1993 test program. Each proposed different methods of cleaning the fouled fill and were given the opportunity to try their proposed method of fill cleaning. To determine the success of these different treatment programs, statistical analyses were performed on the collected data and the changes in the accumulation rates compared.
Research Organization:
Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States); Encor-America, Inc., Mountain View, CA (United States)
OSTI ID:
121538
Report Number(s):
EPRI-TR--104241-V3; CONF-940540--VOL.3
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English