Cooling Towers

The Function and the Benefits 

What are Cooling towers?

Cooling towers are actually heat removal devices utilized to transfer process waste heat out in the atmosphere. There are two different ways these devices can transfer process heat.

First is via utilizing water evaporation and the other is depending only on air in order to cool the working fluid towards the wet-bulb air temperature.

Most common applications of cooling towers include the following:

a)   Chemical plants

b)   Power plants

c)   Oil refineries

d)   Building cooling

The functioning of cooling towers:

The water to be cooled is usually at a temperature between forty and sixty degree Celsius. The water is pumped towards the top part of the structure of cooling tower. The water thereafter flows down through several plastics and wooden partitions available inside the system. The water stream thereafter turns into various droplets.

The water tends to cool off while dropping. This happens well under the impact of a current of air that flows in an upwards direction and then falls inside a basin at the tower base. Thereafter, the water again flows back into the process of production so as to serve as a coolant. The water in a cooling tower can easily cool down to about ten to twenty degree Celsius.

Certain cooling towers consist of one or more big fans. These fans are situated towards the top of the tower. These fans work towards drawing the air in an upward direction with the help of the cooling tower, thereby; extracting good amount of heat from the cooling water. The extraction of heat is contributed by the difference in temperature. The whole conversion works towards drawing away a good amount of heat.

There are certain gigantic cooling towers such as the ones used in power stations are higher enough to produce a kind of ‘chimney effect’ in order to develop a good amount of traction. This rules out the necessity of sucking fans.

Types of cooling towers:

You can get cooling towers in all types of shapes and sizes. One of the best cooling towers is the huge in size. They are created in hourglass shape and are mostly found at power stations. Smaller units also exist. Actually, the size depends on the cooling capacity of what is required.

The cooling tower walls are constructed of concrete. Both smaller and huge cooling towers are constructed of concrete. There are also some units made of wood or even plastic. Some of the experts in this field have also tried creating combinations of concrete, wood and plastic and been very successful.

Cooling towers are very environmentally friendly. The amount of water that is evaporated is only about 2 to 5 per cent. The rest of the water is used again.

There may be a little difficulty with cooling towers when it comes to noise. They tend to produce a lot of noise due to the fans and dropping of water. Hence, you need to make sure that it is not installed to close to the residential area. The noise can be shielded with the help of using plastics instead of wood.

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