20-14: Advances in the Monitoring and Control of Cooling Systems Chemistry

Monitoring and control of cooling water chemistry has improved considerably over the past few decades. Initially, chemicals were metered into the cooling water in proportion to blowdown water flow. The blowdown flow was either measured directly or, more typically, imputed from a makeup water flow meter. The concentration of water treatment chemical was controlled by manually adjusting the delivery rate of a metering pump by timing the drawdown using a calibration cylinder valved into the pump suction. Samples of the cooling water were collected, generally once per shift, and trekked to a chemistry lab where a trained operator performed a wet chemistry analysis for one or more of the treatment chemical components. Based on the results of the wet chemistry tests, the operator would then adjust the metering pump using stopwatch and drawdown cylinder.