Can any one offer viable advice on cooling a 90 degree open loop in west florida? It serves a 57 unit condo and has dual heat exchangers with 90 plates each.

90 is gnerally the extreme for closed loop design before seer drops dramatically. Since you are open loop, is there a reason not to try a cooling tower?
Evaporation is like ly your best friend here.
J

You are drawing water from one well and returning it to another?

Is this a Slim Jim or similar arrangement of flat plate heat exchangers sitting in a retention pond common to the condos?

If so:

1) it isn't really open loop
2) I may have an idea or two

PM me or call

good catch curt I focused on "open loop".

david: if it is closed loop, you may still be within design parameters. If not, get some water to evaporate, or get another heat exchanger to help heat pool.
j

Unfortunately a tower is not in our budget at this time although we are beginning to set a budget to include a long term remedy to this problem. It is a open loop system drawing from one well supposedly 600 feet deep and returning to a diffrent site depth not known at this point. I am running 90 degree on my well side in and on my loop that goes through building which is a closed loop is consistantly running 104 and higher with ambiant temp round high 90's. I am having trouble keeping A/C's from tripping out due to compressor high temp. which alot of the units are original to building and no longer restart on their own without manually resetting breakers. my heat exchangers are alfa laval and i have two, each with 90 plates. each have 229.9 sq ft of area accordding to stamped plate on exchanger. I am having to drain from both exchangers and having to use potable water to replenish and cool closed loop side, which is becoming rather costly. Not to mention it is a balancing act. Any ideas would greatly be appreciated

You are pulling 90F water from 600'? Underground water flows - it's possible that a discharge well is upstream of your intake and that reversing the direction would help. The well pump is adding some heat too. Do you have an acceptable place to discharge to the surface? That at least prevents you from heating your own intake. Larger heat exchangers (or perhaps a cleaning) will bring your closed loop temperature below 100F (which might keep the systems running).

Has anyone considered bleeding off the supply like a standing colunm well to see if it has a positive effect? I am having a hard time beleiving that the well is producing 90 degree ewt. Where does the discharge water go? That would be my first priority in this puzzle.
Eric

Deep groundwater in the FL panhandle should run 70 or so. I agree with the idea to temporarily bleed rather than reinject the leaving water to try to determine the cause of 90 EWT.

What is the distance between supply and reinjection wells?

distance between wells are around 300 feet,

Is there any uggestions on where to find flow meters and temp gauges for 6-8 inch pipe?

That distance should work well.

I'd be suprised if a system serving 57 condos needed much more than 4" pipe. At any rate, there are inexpensive clamp on flow meters available. Highly accurate flow meters are pricey.

Really accurate temperature measurement would require thermowells and instruments, but you could get close enough taping a thermocouple (or even a Walmart digital meat thermometer probe) to the pipe wall. I use a bit of metal duct tape for good conduction and some foam insulation to isolate the probe from ambient air.

If the wells are 300' apart it should not have an issue? I would explore the possibility of some kind of re circulation? Again try to bleed off the supply, Take your ewt at the closest point to the well during the bleed off. With a system as large as yours with extensive piping a failed check valve could be allowing a certain amount of recirc in the building loop.
Eric

I'd be curious to test a bleed as well.

Panhandle is a bit outside my normal AO, but I'd consider a trip to have a look