Snapshots from the 2020 Conference of the Cooling Technology Institute

Here are my top take-aways from the 2020 CTI Conference (Feb 10 – 13, Houston TX)

Cooling Water Specifications

The commonly-accepted KPI’s (Key Performance Indices) and KOI’s (Key Operating Indices) for cooling water systems were set over 50 years ago. For example, the maximum carbon steel corrosion rate for industrial cooling water systems is 3 mils per year. A panel of several owner-operators described their efforts to improve the compliance to the specification limits for their cooling water systems as the first step in building a set of Basic and Best Practices. The objective is to create a framework of specifications that is similar to the ASME Guidelines for Boiler Water systems. The committee welcomes professionals to attend the CTI Summer Meeting in July 2020 in Steamboat Springs, CO to continue work on the guideline.

Papers, papers

My paper, “Survey of Laboratory and Field Test Methods for legionella,” describes the value of these tests to manage the risk of legionella infections from cooling water systems. Some of the other memorable papers include: the performance of a new, non-phosphate corrosion inhibitor, the counterintuitive pH behavior of calcium carbonate, robotically-driven vacuums to remove sludge from cooling towers, the performance of a weak oxidizing biocide, and the case against magnetic water treatment technologies. All of the papers presented at this conference – and previous conferences are available at the CTI website.

Education Seminar

On Wednesday morning, the Education Seminar covered water treatment, standards, cooling tower performance and equipment. This !, I presented the cooling water section of the education seminar as a facilitated event, with experienced members of the audience weighing in on topics such as chemical feed systems, model heat exchangers and on-line biofilm sensors. CTI does not publish the materials from these sessions – you must be “in the room” to listen and learn from the experts