Monitoring a recirculating cooling system for bacterial growth

A recirculating cooling system comprising:

• a coolant sampling line in fluid communication with a recirculating coolant line;
• a deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) microfluidic separation device to receive a coolant sample diverted into a coolant sampling loop from the recirculating coolant line via the coolant sampling line, the DLD microfluidic separation device including a first separation array for separating first bacteria into a first output channel according to a first size threshold and a second separation array for separating second bacteria into a second output channel according to a second size threshold;
• a monitoring device to estimate bacterial count based on first image data collected at the first output channel and second image data collected at the second output channel;
• and
• an alert generation device to generate an alert to remediate bacterial growth in the recirculating cooling system responsive to the bacterial count satisfying a threshold for bacterial growth in the recirculating cooling system.

A process of monitoring a recirculating cooling system for bacterial growth, the process comprising:

• diverting a coolant sample from a recirculating coolant line of a recirculating cooling system into a coolant sampling loop;
• utilizing a deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) microfluidic separation device including at least one separation array to separate bacteria in the coolant sample into a particular output channel according to a particular size threshold;
• monitoring a characteristic property of the coolant sampling loop;
• comparing the characteristic property of the coolant sampling loop to a threshold for bacterial growth in the recirculating cooling system;
• and
• responsive to determining that the characteristic property of the coolant sampling loop satisfies the threshold, generating an alert to remediate the bacterial growth in the recirculating cooling system.