What Are Cooling Towers?

If you’re searching for “What are cooling towers?” you’re probably trying to understand the role of cooling towers in a property you either live or work near.  Cooling towers are a vital part of commercial and industrial properties.  Read more below to understand the types of cooling towers and what they are used for.

What A Cooling Tower Is

 A device used for taking the heat from a system is called a ‘Cooling Tower’. These devices are used as heat rejecters. They reject the heat by cooling down a stream of water that is channeled from industrial processes and/or channeled from an HVAC system, whereas, the unwanted heat gets taken out of the liquid by way of the cooling tower, using different methods. There are two types of cooling towers, the dry bulb & the wet bulb. Each of which use a process different than the other for cooling the liquid in the cooling tower down.

The dry bulb system

This type has to rely on a cooling tower that has a closed circuit, operating close to the dry bulbs air temperature. The dry bulb temperature gives a reading that comes from a thermometer which hangs freely in the air, however, it is being shielded to keep from the moisture, and also from the radiation.

 The wet bulb systems

This type has to rely on the evaporation. The towers function is solely based on the temperature reading of the wet bulb, and it is taking into account the humidity in the air, circling the cooling tower.

 Cooling towers, what are they used for?

Some of the cooling towers are used for the HVAC systems that are used to cool down huge commercial buildings, which also includes cooling down the water used by thermal power stations, chemical plants, oil refineries, and petrochemical plants. There are two different kinds of cooling towers, depending on their location, as well as their applications. The air to be cooled is channeled through in two different ways from the cooling towers, they are the induced draft and the natural draft.

 Industrial cooling towers

The size of a cooling tower on an industrial site will depend on the amount of heat their processes are producing. In industries that need to have a higher level of heat rejected away from their system will be using cooling towers like the ones used in nuclear power plants. They are monolithic structures standing more than 600 feet in height. However, not all of them are as tall as that, there are many processes requiring a cooling tower that is more than just roof mounted, which is common for the HVAC systems.

The cooling towers of an industry can reject heat at the highest levels. For instance, there is a whole lot of heat produced in power plants that run off of burning coal, and this requires a whole lot of water to keep the plant cooled down. That is the reason that it is piping around 315,000 gallons of water every hour through its system. Theoretically speaking, a cooling tower could be cooled down using water that comes straight from a pipe or another water source near the plant. Although, the system would need more than 2 million gallons of water every hour to stay cooled down. The same amount of water would need to go back to the source it came from, which means taking it from the plant again.

It is very clear that that kind of exchange in heated water, the water in the ponds, rivers, and lakes, will certainly change. A significant change in the waters temperature combine with the delicate ecosystem could kill all the plant and animal life. Now that the astronomical heat levels being created during the industrial processes is clear that it is rejecting the heat back into the cooling towers, and instead is destroying our eco system.

 Heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC)

Trying to cool down huge commercial building with the same type of air-conditioning as we use for residential applications would not only be costly, but impractical as well. The cooling towers used for huge commercial buildings can generally be found on their roof tops. However, you will find that these cooling towers are much smaller than the ones used for industrial plants. Cooling towers that are used by HVAC applications is meant to reject heat that is being produced from the chiller. The cooling tower and the water cooled chiller work together.

Cooling Tower Maintenance & Repair

If you own or manage a property that uses cooling towers for HVAC or industrial cooling they need to be maintained and repaired when necessary.  All Kote Lining, Inc. offers cooling tower maintenance & repair as well as refurbishment