Water-saving system for any industry with cooling towers

Magtel’s Energy Division, in collaboration with the company RPOW, is working on the innovative “Orhisi” project whose objective is to reduce water for all those industries that have evaporation towers. Although the technique was initially only intended for solar thermal plants, this system, which is fully scalable, can be applied to other industrial sectors.

Its operation lies in the use of high-efficiency water-to-water heat pumps, powered by photovoltaic solar energy, with which two streams of heat transfer fluid are obtained, one cold and one hot. The cold fluid is conducted to the cooling towers, reducing the temperature of the water entering the tower and, therefore, reducing the flow rate that needed to evaporate for the cooling process. By reducing, or even eliminating, the volume of evaporation water, the water purge and water runaway flows are also reduced proportionally, as well as the amount of chemicals to be dosed into the water circuits.

On the other hand, the hot fluid will generally be used for the thermal processes required on site and optionally, increasing the temperature by means of a second “booster” type heat pump. This will be directed towards an ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) turbine that will transform thermal energy into electricity, suitable for self-consumption by the evaporation reduction system or for any other use.