A cooling tower is often a building’s largest water user, and making changes to its water consumption has the potential to save the building plenty of water and money.
Kaiser Permanente’s Skyline Medical Center in Denver improved the efficiency of its cooling tower, saving almost 250,000 gallons per year. It also switched to chemical-free treatment, which means the building is not only saving money on water and sewer costs, but on chemicals as well. And, thanks to a Denver Water incentive contract, Kaiser will earn about $3,500 for making those water-saving changes.
To improve the cooling tower’s efficiency, Kaiser installed equipment that would allow the cooling tower to recirculate water eight times, instead of 3.7, before dumping it. That change dropped the facility’s annual cooling tower’s water use from about 1 million gallons to roughly 750,000.
So far, everything is working well, and Kaiser is considering installing the system at another facility, said Tom Mieczkowski, facilities support services.
All of Denver Water’s commercial, industrial and institutional customers are eligible to apply for Denver Water’s Cooling Tower Incentive Program, which pays $18.50 for every 1,000 gallons of water saved over a one-year period, up to $40,000. Projects must save at least 100,000 gallons per year.