Each year, Metro Nashville District Energy System gets calls when cooling demand is high and a customer’s building is struggling to maintain comfortable conditions. Typically, this is a result of fouling of the cooling coils or the heat exchanger between us and the customer’s in-building system. It is sometimes too late to start cleaning coils and heat exchangers once the hot, humid, Nashville summer takes hold. Spring is the ideal time to do this annual maintenance work.
Scale and other mineral deposits can build up whenever there is a temperature difference at a heat transfer surface. The cooling coils and heat exchangers are relatively easy to clean at this time of year without much disruption to building operations. (See photos below of two customer heat exchangers.)
Additionally, if the customer’s service includes a heat exchanger between the Metro Nashville District Energy System service and the in-building system, we recommend flushing and backwashing the heat exchanger annually and performing a thorough cleaning about every five years to maximize efficiency of the services delivered by the system.
“Simply flushing out the heat exchangers is a very helpful process each year”, stated Dan Coyle. “Chemical cleaning is a more extensive option but should be considered on a five to ten years interval and can be helpful in maintaining system efficiency. We have customers like the Music City Center and others that do this on a regular basis, and we know other customers can benefit from this recommended annual effort.”
More detail can be found in this Water Treatment and Heat Exchanger Cleaning article.
For more information, please contact the Metro Nashville District Energy System Contract Administrator.
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