Friday, December 7, 2012

RELAC COOLING TOWER UPDATE

Yesterday morning Aqua Virginia delivered two long-awaited and DRB-approved cooling towers to their RELAC facility. 

Once fully installed, enclosed by special sound absorbing panels, and extensively tested, these two high capacity, controllable Evapco evaporative condensers will transfer heat from indoor chillers into the air rather than into Lake Anne.

RELAC typically runs two indoor chillers during the summer and maintains two additional indoor chillers as backups.  Each tower can support two indoor chillers, so RELAC can also maintain one tower as a backup. 

Recent intake modifications eliminated the need for emergency external diesel pumps during low water level conditions.  If all goes well, use of the cooling towers will greatly reduce the need for warm, unreliable, and debris-filled Lake Anne water as a geothermal heat sink, possibly as early as the Summer 2013 cooling season.