If you were to draw a comparison between a car and a cooling tower the fill media would be the engine of the cooling tower and just like a lot of performance cars you can have a motor that performs the way you would expect or you can have an engine that looks the part but without a total rebuild will never perform as it should.

There are only a couple of manufacturers of fill media in the world that actually know what they are producing and how it performs. The leader of this elite few is Brentwood Industries located in Pennsylvania USA but with manufacturing facilities throughout the world.

Brentwood Industries are specialist plastics manufacturers and produce many plastic components and amongst their products are PVC components for cooling towers.

Brentwood Industries pioneered mechanical bonding of PVC fill rather than gluing the sheets together. The glue that is used has carcinogenic solvents. Any claims by a cooling tower supplier about having a “green” cooling tower while using glued fill should be treated with the suspicion it deserves.

CHTS has made the decision to use Brentwood PVC components for several reasons. The main reasons are proven performance and quality.

There are many suppliers of what is labelled CF1200 fill in China and other countries but none of them can give you performance information on this fill. What that means is that a plastics company has decided there was money to be made in this media and copied the fill sheet from the Brentwood design or going back some time, Munter’s design.

We could call this Chinese whispers as the number of copies made from copies made from copies has grown exponentially in the last few years.

What does copying a copy do to performance? Some of the copied fill is up to 15% down on what the performance should be. That replacement fill you bought from the cheap supplier online in China or his local distributor may cost you a chiller or lost rent because the tower will not hold design.

Believe it or not that could be the least of your worries in buying cheap unknown copies.
The other item to consider in purchasing copies of PVC tower components is the eliminators.
The drift rate loss of a cooling tower was legislated when AS 3666 was introduced in the 1990’s. The problem back then was there was no accepted test method to measure drift. So AS/NZ 4180 was brought into being with a test method that worked fine in the laboratory but was proven through many field tests not to be as accurate or give repeatable results. This was the Chloride Balance Test Method. (CBTM)

It became apparent that the accuracy of these test done in the field were less than an ideal way to prove drift loss and the CBTM was only suitable for laboratory testing.

Then came AS/NZ 4180.1. In this update of the standard the primary test method is the Heated Bead Isokinetic (HBIK)

This was shown to have accurate, repeatable results but again can only really be done in a laboratory and there were also only a few laboratories in the world with the necessary equipment.

Even Brentwood has their eliminators tested by another laboratory with the necessary equipment.

What should be understood is that people are still using the old test results done in the field using the CBTM to sell eliminators now and people are unknowingly accepting these results. The fact is the latest AS 4180.1 is quite clear in what tests are acceptable. This means those people using old test result to sell eliminators AND those people accepting these results are not compliant with AS 3666.

Remember that you are not just not complying with a standard you are breaking a law in using eliminators that do not comply with the latest standard, so the unsuspecting purchaser needs to be careful.

We have heard that some unscrupulous suppliers are copying Brentwood test data and using this to sell inferior copies of the Brentwood eliminators. If you have any doubts contact Brentwood direct and ask them about the supplier from whom you intend to purchase eliminators. If Brentwood has not issued their test results to that supplier they can tell you that you are about to purchase trouble.

If the performance of the PVC fill and eliminator components are not correct how much can you trust that cheap suppliers statement about compliance to PVC material CTI STD-136?

We should point out at this point that Brentwood have the most efficient eliminators available today and like the statement on performance Brentwood also issue their compliance with CTI STD-136.

Their CF Ultra eliminators have been independently tested using the HBIK method to have a drift rate of between 0.0004% and 0.00025% drift.

I think the closest competitor to that has independent test results at almost 3 times this drift rate and yet proudly advertises this result.

It is up to the purchaser of the eliminators to ensure they are fit for purpose but if you are buying the “second best protection” to me it is not very reassuring and legally, if you use second best, have you fulfilled your obligations to the public?

Another reason for choosing the Brentwood product.

It works and it has been proven to be vastly superior to other eliminators.

You could view eliminators as your last line of defence but with the price of water rising it is also a cost saving measure.