Ozone for Cooling Water Treatment and Legionella Control
IIC - Independent International Consultants Ltd

Ozone has a number of interesting applications in the field of water treatment including drinking water, waste water, pharmaceutical solutions, bottled water, food washing and cooling water treatment.

Ozone is a strongly oxidising gas formed by the combination of three oxygen molecules usually by controlled electrical discharge across a dielectric barrier using air or, for improved efficiency, oxygen feed gas which has been preconditioned to remove impurities and traces of water.

The result is that a proportion of the feed gas is converted into ozone, for large industrial ozone plants using oxygen feed gas the conversion may be greater than 10%, typically for air supplied ozone generators the conversion rate is 3 % and 6% for oxygen fed units.

Once produced the ozone can then be used for oxidation/disinfection processes, as not only is it a stronger oxidant than chlorine, bromine or chlorine dioxide, the by-products of aqueous disinfection processes are oxygen and in some cases oxygenated species.

Ozone therefore, despite being a toxic gas, is considered to be particularly environmentally friendly and used for example to reduce AOX (Absorbable Organic Halogen) concentrations in discharge waters.

In cooling water treatment ozone may be used with or without additional water treatment chemistry depending on circumstances.

IIC Limited has substantial expertise in the application of ozone for cooling water and legionella control, from both the direction of ozone expertise and cooling water chemistry expertise. This includes system sizing, ancillary gas preparation equipment, ozone monitoring and control units, contacting options and potential suppliers for consideration.