Legionella outbreak from cooling towers can be prevented!

MONTREAL, Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ - With the recent outbreak of legionella disease in Quebec City, one of the most important ever in Canada, building owners and government officials in most major cities are searching for means to prevent such outbreaks.

There is a well proven technology available to avoid such outbreak originating from cooling towers. A side stream filtration system combining a vortex effect and a micro-sand filtration media which eliminates most particles down to 0,45 micrometer, nominal. Knowing that a bacteria size is about 1 micrometer, this unique industrial water filtration system with more than 2,500 systems sold around the world under the trade name Vortisand™, reduces mechanically the presence of bacteria.

The manufacturer of this system - Sonitec-Vortisand inc. - also offers a proprietary anti-bacterial media called MCM (Microbial Control Media) to further reduce the potential of bacteriological contamination often found in cooling towers of air conditioning systems.

Tested in the field on numerous large buildings over North America since 4 years, this innovative media has proven to be consistently effective and non-leaching. In a white paper published from the annual conference of 2010 of the Cooling Technology Institute it is reported that in one large commercial building in Montreal equipped with an 800 ton chiller and a cooling tower Vortisand™ filter with MCM media, has kept the microbiological population well below the 10⁵ cfu/ml commonly used as a safe operating limit even without any continuous bactericide treatment.

The use of this MCM media when combined with the microsand filtration system Vortisand™ is the most efficient, yet environmentally friendly approach, to prevent any bacteriological contamination, particularly a legionella outbreak always possible in most major cities where cooling towers are omnipresent.

Sonitec-Vortisand inc. has developed and markets a unique filter for industrial water polishing. The Vortisand filter system is an automatic backwashable centrifugal sand filter, which combines centrifugal separation and micro-sand filtration. Vortisand achieves very fine filtration (0.45 micrometer) at high rate while using 80 to 90% less water for backwashing compared to traditional sand filters. Vortisand is widely used for cooling tower, district cooling chilled water, pre RO/DI, water reuse and other specialized polishing water applications.

Attachment: article describing the antimicrobial filtration technology. 

SOURCE Sonitec-Vortisand inc.

PDF available at: http://stream1.newswire.ca/media/2012/08/27/20120827_C9768_DOC_EN_17240.pdf