Treatment System Slashes Buildings' Water, Electricity Use

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Silver Bullet water treatment systemProperty developers Lerner, Carr and WC Smith, and Washington, DC historic hotel Willard InterContinental have installed water treatment technology from Silver Bullet to cut water, electricity and chemical usage in their cooling towers for air-conditioning.

Lerner tested the system for 16 months in its cooling towers and condensing systems, says it saved "considerable" water and electricity — a Silver Bullet spokesperson estimates the property manager saved 45 millions gallons since installing its first system in 2011 — and expects to save millions of gallons of water and thousands of kilowatt hours of electricity over time, once it installs the system in all of its DC-area properties.

Silver Bullet, which developed the non-toxic biocide water treatment for a range of applications from cooling towers to livestock water supply, says the 335-room Willard InterContinental hotel has saved about half a million gallons of water and 14,000 MWh of electricity since installing the system in March. Silver Bullet says that Carr Properties, which owns the hotel, has also installed its water treatment system in four other properties in the last six months; it estimates this saved the developer 4.5 million gallons of water and 105,000 MWh of electricity.

Since 2011, the system has saved WC Smith more than 8 million gallons of water and 140,000 MWh of electricity at its 298,000-square-foot Federal Gateway office building, according to Silver Bullet.

The company has also installed a system at the Department of Defense’s North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), located in the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., which it says saves more than 1,000 MWh of electricity and more than 1 million gallons of water a year.

Up to half of a building’s water use is from cooling towers, which provide cooled water for air-conditioning, manufacturing and electric-power generation. Silver Bullet says building owners can meet sustainability goals and requirements with more efficient water treatment.

A University of Pittsburg study found the technology was more effective than other systems in controlling the growth of free floating heterotrophic plate count bacteria, reducing their counts by 98.8 percent.

The company’s technology taps the building’s air supply to pass air through its processor, which sends oxygen into the building’s cooling towers’ water supply. Here the oxygen bonds with water to form hydrogen peroxide, which prevents bacterial growth, uses a calcium solution to prevent scaling and reduces water usage. It reduces the corrosion rate by keeping minerals dissolved in water, which makes the water less chemically active.

Silver Bullet says the system can be retrofitted into any building in less than a day and can be rented, with no upfront costs.

Image Credit: Silver Bullet

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