alcohol based antifreeze

Rudy

I have a heat pump loop with appx 300 tons of w/s h/p installed. Currentlly there is no glycol in the loop only treatment my loop is clean, no calcification or scale, only 1 gal of water through the make-up in the last year. My customers superintendent as well as myself are both concerned about freeze up of the closed loop tower in the event of a power failure or a sump heater failure. the tower and the boiler are both at capicity as evidenced by low loop temps in winter and high loop temps in summer. I have considered PG but due to the loss of capicity of PG rejected it as an option, Ethylene Glycol has less loss of heat transfer than PG but is toxic, our local sewer district is making the use of EG verry difficult at best. My Chemical supplier told me of a product he is aware of but does not carry that is alcohol based, paooibly poly vinyl alcohol, has a viscosity lower than water,actually increases the thermal capicity of the solution,and is enviornmentally friendly. This sounds almost too good to be true. Does anyone have any brand names or experience with this product? It is not glycerine. Thanks Eric

Glenn Harrison_2

The primary anti-freeze...

used for Geo-Thermal is Methanol, which is an alcohol based anitfreeze. There is also a trademarked name of Enviranol created by WaterFurnace International (www.waterfurnace.com), which is a more environmentally friendly version of methanol.

The one thing to watch out for with alcohol based anitfreezes is that if you go with a higher than 40% mixture of anitfreeze to water, the mixture is FLAMMABLE, so keep that in mind.