The one high maintenance part of a mechanical draft cooling tower is of course the rotating equipment and ancillary components.

This includes the fan cylinders, axial flow fans, right angle speed reducers (commonly known as gearboxes), drive shafts, motors, certain controls and steel or concrete supports. These components need frequent checks and maintenance to keep them running smoothly and reliably thereby ensuring maximum plant output.

As with all machines and for a variety of reasons, cooling tower mechanical equipment can and does fail. To begin with, this equipment operates in a very corrosive environment (hot moist airflow). This environment demands the right selection of materials and machine design. It is usually quite reliable but easy to ignore; if ignored it will fail. Finally, a lack of knowledge about the air moving equipment by maintenance workers can also lead to problems.

The first step in ensuring smoothly operating air moving equipment is to follow all recommendations in the Operations and Maintenance Manual supplied with the cooling tower. If you do not have adequate personnel to perform the recommendations, ATS can help. Our cooling tower technicians are trained in all aspects of mechanical maintenance. They also know some things your maintenance workers may not. Things like the importance of fan tip clearance and how to optimize it are often overlooked by those without the right experience. Also, fan hub seal installation and water in hollow fiberglass fan blades are all important issues that can be overlooked. Call us today to schedule your very necessary preventive maintenance procedures. While there, they can also help you with proper condition assessments.

A frequent problem with all rotating equipment is vibration. The rotating equipment used to induce the airflow on cooling towers is very specialized and is some respects behaves differently than other rotating equipment in your plant. ATS has the resources to help you resolve any vibrations issues occurring on your cooling tower. Call us today and we will help you eliminate those problems and keep your cooling tower running smoothly.