Cooling Tower Water Disinfection At Bielefeld, Germany

The City of Bielefeld, Germany provides municipal utilities including electricity, natural gas, district heating, and water needs for a population of approximately 330,000. The municipality operates three gas-fired boilers with tapping turbines to feed into the district heating system that has a thermal peak load of 300 MW.

Cooling water from generators, oil coolers, and sampling coolers are re-cooled via two open-evaporation cooling towers with a total capacity of 2,500 m3. Historically, the municipality has used chlorine dioxide to manage Legionella and algae blooms in their cooling water; unfortunately, a sustainable genetic content of less than 100 cfu has not been consistently maintained, especially in autumn and winter, when cooling tower swathes pull through the factory’s internal road.