How Recycling System Reduced Water Use by 25 Million Gallons at the University of Alabama-Birmingham

Listen to or read the questions and answers from Matt Winslet, of the University of Alabama-Birmingham as he talks about their water recycling system that saved the university 25 million gallons a year. Green cleaning in action! Read the excerpt below from Facilitiesnet.com

Water Ripples, photo by Macky Franklin, via flickr.com

1. Briefly describe how the water recycling system works, and how the school uses the water that's collected.

UAB has three centralized chilled water plants with machines capable of 38,000 tons of cooling. Serving 47 campus and hospital buildings we use a lot of water in our cooling towers during the evaporative and blow-down process.

As condensate water is gravity-drained from air handler chilled water coils, it is intercepted and collected in small basins positioned locally at each air handler. Each local basin has a small level-controlled sump-pump sized to transfer collected water to a larger 500-gallon collection tank. The 500-gallon collection tank contains level controls that pump high-pressure, filtered condensate into the chilled-water return-line before it leaves the building. This rise in pressure is sensed blocks away at the central plant and water is relieved from the chilled water return line into the cooling tower. This in turn reduces makeup water required during the evaporative cooling process. Note that if either the small basin sump pump, high pressure return pump, or central plant tower relief valve fails, the water exits down the drain in the building as it has for many years. The system works very well with ground water sources too.

Read the full article on Facilitiesnet.com