Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Water Harvesting in Cooling Towers
EPA Contract Number: 68HERC22C0003Title: Water Harvesting in Cooling Towers
Investigators: Khalil, Karim
Small Business: Infinite Cooling
EPA Contact: Richards, April
Phase: I
Project Period: December 1, 2021 through May 31, 2022
Project Amount: $100,000
RFA: Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I (2022) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: SBIR - Water , Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR)
Description:
The most common cooling method is evaporative cooling towers, where a portion of the water is evaporated to cool the remaining water in the system. The vapor is released into the atmosphere and lost, requiring new water to be added. For a commercial building with a million square feet, water consumption for cooling can be up to 20 million gallons/year and can cost about $200K/year. If the evaporated water in cooling towers can be recaptured, hundreds of billions of gallons of clean distilled water could be generated every year, offsetting a major part of water usage and related energy costs.
Cooling towers evaporate water to provide cooling. The water vapor that is generated in the process is discharged from the cooling tower and forms a visible plume of small liquid water droplets as vapor condenses by mixing with colder ambient air. The proposed technology uses ion emitters to generate electrical charges and inject them into the water droplets. An electric field is then applied to attract the charged droplets to collection meshes where the water is captured and channeled back into the system for reuse. This project focuses on testing a full prototype of the technology on a small cooling tower that is similar to towers used in commercial buildings, and measuring performance metrics such as water collection rate, water quality, and plume abatement.
Summary/Accomplishments (Outputs/Outcomes):
Throughout the 6-month Phase I award a fully functioning factory-assembled mechanical draft cooling tower was installed with all the auxiliary systems enabling its operation (boiler, pumps, water reservoirs, instrumentation etc.). An Infinite Cooling WaterPanelTM system was engineered and designed specifically for the cooling tower, the WaterPanelTM was fabricated and assembled, and then tested on the cooling tower for its several water savings related benefits. During the Phase I award, we mounted the Infinite Cooling WaterPanelTM and performed some initial testing on the unit which was able provide preliminary validation of the design. Our three key objectives to demonstrate the commercial potential of our product are to validate the quantity of collected water, demonstrate that collected water is of much higher quality than the circulating water of the cooling tower, and provide plume abatement. We were able to partially validate two of these key objectives during Phase I of this award, and now have the internal capability to fully validate the technology and fulfill the remaining key objectives during Phase II. Our preliminary results from Phase I show that the collected water quality is much cleaner than the re-circulating water in the cooling tower, up to 85X-100X lower in electrical conductivity and measured collected water conductivities as low as ~20 µS/cm. Additionally, we were able to validate our systems ability to provide plume abatement. However, due to the delays early in Phase I where there was very little plume even without our system's presence (hot and dry ambient conditions). This is primarily due to the delays early on the project that constrained our testing period to the 3-4 final weeks of the award, which was during the peak summer conditions of our weather in Boston, MA. In order to properly validate the plume abatement capabilities of our product, we will need to verify the ability to abate the appearance of the plume in colder and more humid conditions, specifically ones that will be experienced during the Fall, Winter and Spring seasons. These conditions will create much thicker and denser plumes where we be able to showcase the systems capabilities more clearly as well as map a full calendar year of ambient conditions. Lastly, regarding our first key objective of measuring the quantity of collected water as a fraction of the evaporated water - a yearly average will be a proper way to validate the performance of the system due to the variation with ambient weather throughout the seasons. Similarly, to the plume abatement key objective, the quantity of water collected is correlated to the thickness and visual appearance of the plume. Due to the third party delays in installing and commissioning our cooling tower during Phase I, we propose to run the cooling tower and Infinite Cooling WaterPanelTM during the Phase II award over a variety of ambient conditions to be able to provide representative and meaningful results on the potential % of water recovery of our system.
Conclusions:
The Phase I conclusions are that the Infinite Cooling WaterPanelTM can provide clean water recovery and plume abatement for evaporative factory-assembled cooling towers servicing the industrial and commercial building sectors. During Phase I we were able to demonstrate the ability for the system to collect water with a reduction in conductivity up to 85X-100X the conductivity of the recirculating water in the cooling tower, ~20 µS/cm, or about 10-15X cleaner than Malden, MA city water and 30X cleaner than Cambridge, MA city water. We were also able to conclude that our system is capable of providing plume abatement, however will need further testing in a larger set of ambient conditions to test the system when the plume is more dense (colder and more humid conditions in non-summer seasons). Additionally, we will need to run the collector over a longer period to estimate the water collection potential of the technology as a yearly average. We propose to validate both of these objectives during Phase II of the award.
During Phase I the team made significant commercialization progress on the factory-assembled cooling tower market. New customer discussions were logged throughout the award that led to several negotiations on potential paid pilots for our technology on live-operating cooling towers in the field. Two paid pilots on industrial facilities (owned by a large industrial clients) that have several factory-assembled cooling towers were secured and signed - the pilots are scheduled for late 2022 and early 2023. Infinite Cooling further developed its manufacturing capabilities throughout the Phase I award, identifying several key partners in New England. We now have partners who can fully fabricate and assemble IC WaterPanel'sTM to fit cooling towers of most standard sizes (ranging from 3'-32' fan cells). Lastly - we have initiated licensing discussions with several cooling tower OEM's which provides another route to commercialization for our product. Most discussions in this space center around how to integrate the WaterPanelTM technology into newly factory assembled cooling towers, so that the product can ship fully built including the water capturing system. This allows for assembly cost minimization and the introduction of key marketing differentiators during the sale process.
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.