Cooling Tower Crisis: How Hydrogen Peroxide Scrubbed Away The Bacteria Buildup

A power plant on the West coast was experiencing problems with its large, open-circuit cooling tower system. Excessive bacterial growth in the tower was leading to solids accumulation within the tower’s fill and an increasing frequency of TSS excursions in their blow down discharges to the local municipal treatment facility.

Prior attempts at cleaning the cooling tower system with a variety of biocides, both oxidizing and non-oxidizing, proved ineffective. They needed an immediate solution to clean the tower that was fast, cost effective and did not require removal and manual cleaning of the tower’s fill material.