ANEFRYC urges SEPAR not to create unjustified social alarm about cooling towers

The Technical Commission of ANEFRYC, National Association of Cold and Refrigeration Companies, urges SEPAR, The Spanish Society of Pneumology and Thoracic Surgery, not to create unjustified social alarm about Legionella in relation to evaporative refrigeration equipment.

This technology receives new support from icaen in the face of restrictive legislation

Refrigeration equipment is safe with proper maintenance, as recognized by several official bodies.

For an outbreak of legionella associated with a cooling tower to occur, a highly unlikely chain of events must occur.

In a press release issued on July 12, SEPAR states that the evolution of the disease "is linked to new technologies and the development of collective refrigeration facilities, mainly." Faced with this statement, it should be remembered that these equipment are totally safe with the maintenance required by Royal Decree 865/2003, of July 4, which establishes very simple protocols recommended by all manufacturers. For several years, ANEFRYC has been demanding the production of serious statistics that point to cooling towers as the cause of outbreaks of legionellosis harmful to the population. The absence of them facilitates this type of information that ANEFRYC considers to create a totally unjustified social alarm.

This is because for an outbreak of legionella to occur in a water cooling equipment and it reaches the environment, a highly unlikely chain of events has to occur. These are:

1. The arrival of a virulent colony of Legionella Pneumophila through the water supply network

2. The operation of the equipment in uncontrolled conditions

3. The discharge of an air stream with contaminated microdroplets in suspension, which can reach where people are

4. A sufficient number of these microdroplets are inhaled by people susceptible to contracting the disease.

If any of these links are broken, the chance of the appearance of an outbreak is zero. To prevent the risk of Legionellosis, it is enough to break this chain of events in any of the links, there being three of them that it is possible to break with a good design and a correct operation of the installation: avoid the conditions that favor the multiplication of bacteria, minimize the drag of water aerosols in the discharge of the air of the equipment and reduce the chances of inhalation by people through the appropriate location of the team.

Information such as that issued by SEPAR, which ANEFRYC considers biased and poorly informed, has traditionally caused a very damaging social alarm for the industry in general. Cooling towers are an essential component to ensure the energy efficiency of the industry, as they have already understood in many countries around us. For this reason, and because of the conviction that the towers are safe with adequate maintenance, the Ministry of Industry, which has included these equipment in the PAE (Energy Saving Plan), as well as the ICAEN, Catalan Institute of Energy, has launched a program of aid for these equipment.

Institutional support

In this sense, as reported by ICAEN officials to ANEFRYC, this body is studying possible solutions to a decree signed by the City Council of L'Hospitalet de Llobregat in which cooling towers are discriminated against air cooling equipment, much less energy efficient. "From the ICAEN it is understood that the condition established by the local administration of l'Hospitalet de Llobregat is focused solely on avoiding possible outbreaks of legionella. However, given the exhaustive existing regulations on hygienic-sanitary criteria for the prevention and control of legionella (RD 865/2003; RD 352/2004) and taking into account the technological improvement of these facilities, the ICAEN considers that the energy savings achieved with them compensate, economically and technically, the correct maintenance management necessary in these facilities to avoid any outbreak of legionella. It is for this reason that cold installations through evaporative systems are subsidized in the energy saving and efficiency orders that are published annually and, therefore, have the support and impulse of the administration as technologies to achieve the objective of reducing energy consumption in Catalonia, specifically the specific consumption in cold systems", have assured ANEFRYC from the Energy Efficiency Area of ICAEN.

Among the environmental, energy and economic advantages of cooling towers and water condensers include the lower consumption of electrical energy and water at source, the lower potential for refrigerant leakage into the atmosphere, the lower acoustic and greenhouse environmental impact, the possibility of using refrigerants with low environmental impact or the reduction of the cost of investment in installations, among others.

"From the Association that I represent we call for responsibility in the information that is issued around evaporative refrigeration equipment, so that they are complete and do not create an unjustified social alarm. Evaporative cooling equipment is absolutely safe with the maintenance required by law and its energy, environmental and economic advantages are unquestionable," said Manuel Lamúa, Secretary General of ANEFRYC.

About ANEFRYC: National Association of Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Companies is the dean association of the sector. It brings together more than 250 companies divided into eight sectoral working groups, among which are the main manufacturers of evaporative cooling systems in the country.

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Authors: TECNOSOSTENIBLE - Engineering of comfort and energy efficiency

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