Holding the blowdown and spiking the cooling tower water with Boron or Lithium is a good idea; but the service rep in the field may not have those tests available for field use. A reliable way is to make the shot from the hip estimated first: follow that total volume estimate with a simple field test for sodium chloride as NaCl and then spike the system with a few pounds of salt to give you enough rise in the NaCl to be seen and calculated. The change salt content of the recirculating water will give you the volume of the water. If the city water is 30 ppm at 3 cycles, there should be 90 ppm of salt in the tower water. If it is 210 ppm after adding the salt we have about 120 ppm increase. 120 ppm is right at 1 pound if chemical per thousand gallons. So if you added 5 pounds of salt, we should have 5000 gallons in the system. Tha small amount of salt added is not enough to give a concern about corrosion, and it will be quickly removed by blowdown.
Published by Waymon Hofheins
Holding the blowdown and spiking the cooling tower water with Boron or Lithium is a good idea; but the service rep in the field may not have those tests available for field use. A reliable way is to make the shot from the hip estimated first: follow that total volume estimate with a simple field test for sodium chloride as NaCl and then spike the system with a few pounds of salt to give you enough rise in the NaCl to be seen and calculated. The change salt content of the recirculating water will give you the volume of the water. If the city water is 30 ppm at 3 cycles, there should be 90 ppm of salt in the tower water. If it is 210 ppm after adding the salt we have about 120 ppm increase. 120 ppm is right at 1 pound if chemical per thousand gallons. So if you added 5 pounds of salt, we should have 5000 gallons in the system.
Tha small amount of salt added is not enough to give a concern about corrosion, and it will be quickly removed by blowdown.