Cooling towers, also known as cooling towers, are frequently juxtaposed with the problem of legionella. In fact, precisely because of the special conditions that can be created inside these facilities, primarily the high water temperature and humidity, it is possible for bacteria that are harmful even to humans to thrive and spread, first and foremost legionella. That is why it is crucial to carry out proper maintenance of cooling towers and various cooling and air conditioning systems.
When manufacturing Decsa cooling towers, we select materials that avoid water stagnation , which is the main cause of the proliferation of legionella bacteria. Surfaces of the employed materials must be smooth and have no porosity where the bacteria can nest.
That is why we manufacture our evaporative cooling towers and condensers mainly in hot-dip galvanised Z-725 sheet steel.
To further reduce the risk of bacterial proliferation, you can also finish the above sheets with our special smooth epoxy powder coating, called Decsacoating Plus.
We also paid special attention to the selection of FRP panels which, for the Decsa cooling towers, have a smooth, non-porous surface to prevent the nesting of legionella bacteria.
One means of transmission of the legionella bacteria is inhalation by aerosols, i.e. the tiny water droplets, which may have been contaminated by the legionella, and this is how bacterial pneumonia attacks humans. To avoid the risk of bacteria spreading outside the cooling towers, highly efficient drift eliminators are fitted just before the air outlet area; these ensure a droplet loss of less than 0.001%. Correct maintenance of drift eliminators is essential to avoid the dragging out of water droplets that may be contaminated with Legionella.
Other than preventing the bacterium from getting out of the equipment, it is first of all necessary to prevent its formation and proliferation: thus, we designed and manufactured all Decsa cooling towers according to the current <strong wg-1="">anti-legionella guidelines</strong>, which mainly provide for the manufacture of water collection basins with a self-draining slope, to avoid the dangerous stagnation of water, ideal habitat for the formation of biofilm and bacteria.
Moreover, all inside the cooling towers must be designed and manufactured to avoid water stagnation.
To prevent the internal environment of the cooling tower from becoming conducive to the proliferation of Legionella, other bacteria or micro-organisms, the prevention of water stagnation in the water basin is important, especially during plant downtime. To avoid problems with scaling, biofilm, legionella or other micro-bacteria,professional water treatment is recommended. Such treatment takes place with chemical products that are not harmful to humans but very effective against such microorganisms and the prevention of salt formation.
It is very important, when involving water treatment specialists, to provide them with the indications to study treatments that prevent the proliferation of bacteria in cooling towers.
Here are the main chemical and physical values accepted by our cooling towers based on the components used for their manufacturing.
In this section, we attach regulations, guidelines and reference documentation regarding the risk of legionella in cooling towers and ingenerale:
The following article is inserted after article 60a: Art.61a 1 (Establishment of the register of wet cooling towers and evaporative condensers at municipalities)
As instituted by the law reported here, we remind you that registration in the cadastre of cooling towers is now compulsory within 90 days; we quote below the necessary documentation. In this regard, we also remind you that the Decree of the Lombardy Region No. 2097 of 20/02/2020, has partly changed the methods of registration in the cadastre of cooling towers and evaporative condensers, replacing the paper form with the Ge.T.Ra:
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