Compartmental Modeling of Biofouling in Industrial Cooling Circuits

Abstract

Industrial cooling circuits with wet cooling towers use raw water to remove residual heat from industrial processes. These circuits are very prone to fouling and particularly biofouling. This work proposes a compartmental model built from a full hydrodynamic characterization (using computational fluid dynamics and experimental, local, and system data) of an industrial cooling circuit and implemented with a biofilm growth model which considers kinetic (temperature, concentrations) as well as hydrodynamic (internal and external transfer) limitations. It can therefore predict the biofouling growth per surface unit in the different part of the circuit, considering the various hydrodynamic conditions, while taking only a few minutes to simulate a full year considering season variation of temperature and water quality.