There are still a dozen or so cooling towers on campus, and ISTC staff are meeting with related building representatives later this month to review the options for reducing water consumption in these towers.
The Illini Union has demolished its old cooling towers for HVAC in the past 15 years, and recently demolished the old evaporator cooling system for the refrigeration chilling water in 2017. Almost all of our HVAC is now on DDC, with the exception of AHU’s 1, 2, & 3 in the South Building attic, and AHU-21 in the North Building NW subbasement.
Water Station Foreman, Shawn Young, indicated today that there are two remaining stand-alone cooling towers on campus buildings maintained by F&S: Temple Buell Hall and the Personnel Services Building. One of these (Personnel) is scheduled to be added to the central chilled water loop in 2020, according to the Utilities Energy Production and Distribution Master Plan. Base on that discussion, Morgan Johnston will be following up with the Water SWATeam to let them know that because there are so few remaining stand-alone cooling towers, this is not a high-priority item to pursue.
Morgan Johnston and Chenxi Jiang have requested a meeting with Dave Boehm and other Building Maintenance representatives to discuss the options for implementing a new water conservation strategy for stand-alone building rooftop cooling towers.
We set COC = 5 for pilot studies.
Updates and discussion of greywater meter, greywater design standards, cooling tower cycles of concentration, water use dashboard, and student outreach.
Below is information provided by Jeremy Overmann, B.S. Ch. E., Water Treatment Specialist, on the water use and cycles of concentration (COC) in a cooling tower, as requested after a Land and Water SWAT meeting.
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Water SWAT members,
Updates on BIF Greywater Meter application. Discussion on Cooling Tower COC and "Zero" blowdown systems.
The iCAP Working Group met and discussed the following agenda items. Meeting notes are attached.
1. Brief iCAP Portal overview by Morgan
2. Discuss any updates to Water002, Cooling Tower Increase COC
3. Discuss Trans008, Bike Parking in Ramps
4. Discuss updates to Econs004, Green Labs Coordinator
5. Consider issues with recommendation process and view recommendation tracker
Review of pending recommendations: BIF Greywater, Increase Cooling Tower COC, Design Center Greywater Piping. Discussion on possible edits to the SWAT/iWG process. Student members will submit proposal to Student Sustainability Commision for apermanent meter to measure BIF greywater use. The Water SWATeam will meet every other week and will have a joint meeting with the Agriculture, Land Use, Food, and Sequestration (ALUFS) SWATeam this semester.
Discussion focused on finalizing information for Poster for the Campus Sustainability Celebration in October of 2016.
