Description and Objectives:

Study, design and validate a system of recovery of the condensate of the air conditioners for its use in the cooling towers for buildings of great consumption, mainly industrial and tertiary sector, this design will be validated in the facilities of Epcos-TDK, equipped with air conditioners and cooling towers, to demonstrate the expected improvements in terms of environmental impact and efficiency of the system (reduction in electricity consumption, reduction in grid water consumption, reduction of losses due to purges and less maintenance).

A solution has been put in place that allows, on the one hand, to recover the water produced in the air conditioners to direct them to a storage tank of 500 liters, and, on the other hand, a pumping system that allows to take advantage of the water produced to be used in existing cooling towers that service the production plant.

Results 

Development of a web platform that allows measurement and monitoring of the results of the proposed solution.

In general, the functionality of the application can be summarized in the following points:

• · Display the main parameters and general condition of the air conditioners
• · Administration and modification of some application values (set pump operation or reset counters).
• · File upload (excel) with data related to the purge, conductivity and operation of the Cooling Towers.
• · Visualize through graphs, the evolution of the registered values.
• · Obtaining reports (in CSV) of the different sections of the plant in a range of dates.

The system has been monitored during winter, spring and summer months; the results that have been obtained have been in line with what was expected according to the theoretical models developed within the framework of the project. Water production in the winter months is reduced but the months in which the outside humidity is high (mainly spring and summer) have shown high water production; The measured water production ranges from 35 l / day in the month of March, to 1583 l / day in the month of June.

In the spring and summer months, some coverage of water demand for cooling towers between 10-15% of total consumption has been achieved. Assuming considerable water consumption savings.