COOLING TOWER

• Equipment for Humidification and

Dehumidification:

» Cooling tower
» Tray towers
» Spray chambers
» Spray ponds

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 COOLING TOWER
• Introduction:
– Water and air are brought into intimate contact in
cooling tower.
– Used to reject heat into atmosphere.
– Rejection of heat is through natural process of
evaporation.
– Evaporation is most efficient for maximum flow of
air with maximum exposure of water surface area.

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Introduction:
• Cooled water is needed for
– air conditioners,
– manufacturing processes or
– power generation.
• Cooling tower
– used to reduce the temperature of a water stream by
extracting heat from water and emitting it to the
atmosphere.
• This figure shows a cooling tower. Cooling towers
– make use of evaporation whereby some of the water is
evaporated into a moving air stream
– and subsequently discharged into the atmosphere.
– As a result, the remainder of the water is cooled down
significantly .

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Introduction:
The cooling towers are used in,
• Power plants
• Petroleum refineries
• Petrochemical plants
• Natural gas processing units
• Food processing plants
• Semiconductor plants

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• Introduction:

Main Features of Cooling tower

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 1. Fan 2. Drift eliminator 3. Warm water
4. Water distribution 5. Water
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J. Bhavsar nozzle 6. Fill packing 7
7. Air inlet 8. Water pool 9. Cooled water
 Components
• Fans.
– Both axial (propeller type) and centrifugal fans are used in towers.
– Generally, propeller fans are used in induced draft towers and both propeller and
centrifugal fans are found in forced draft towers.
• Drift eliminators.
– These capture water droplets entrapped in the air stream that otherwise would be lost to the
atmosphere.
• Air inlet.
– This is the point of entry for the air entering a tower.
– The inlet may take up an entire side of a tower (cross-flow design) or
– It can be located low on the side or the bottom of the tower (counter-flow design).
• Louvers.
– The purpose of louvers is to equalize air flow into the fill and retain the water within the
tower. Many counter flow tower designs do not require louvers.
• Nozzles.
– These spray water to wet the fill.
– Uniform water distribution at the top of the fill is essential to achieve proper wetting of the
entire fill surface.
– Nozzles can either be fixed and spray in a round or square patterns, or they can be part of a
rotating assembly as found in some circular cross-section towers.

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 Components
• Frame and casing.
– Most towers have structural frames that support the exterior enclosures
(casings), motors, fans, and other components.
• Fill.
– Most towers employ fills (made of plastic or wood) to facilitate heat
transfer by maximizing water and air contact. There are two types of fill:
• Splash fill: water falls over successive layers of horizontal splash bars,
continuously breaking into smaller droplets, while also wetting the fill
surface. Plastic splash fills promote better heat transfer than wood splash
fills.
• Film fill: consists of thin, closely spaced plastic surfaces over which the
water spreads, forming a thin film in contact with the air. These surfaces
may be flat, corrugated, honeycombed, or other patterns. The film type of
fill is the more efficient and provides same heat transfer in a smaller volume
than the splash fill.
• Cold-water basin.
– The cold-water basin is located at or near the bottom of the tower.
– It receives the cooled water that flows down through the tower and fill.

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 TYPES OF COOLING TOWER
• Cooling tower are subdivided into two major
types:
– Natural draft cooling tower
» which utilizes buoyancy via a tall chimney.
» Warm, moist air naturally rises due to the density
differential to the dry, cooler outside air.
» Warm, moist air is less dense than drier air at the
same pressure.
– Mechanical draft cooling tower
» which uses power driven fan motors to force or draw
air through the tower.

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 TYPES OF COOLING TOWER
Natural Draft Cooling Towers
• Which utilizes buoyancy via a tall
chimney.
• The natural draft cooling tower
makes use of the difference in
temperature between the ambient
air and the hotter air inside the
tower
• Hot air moves upwards through
the tower (less dense)
• Fresh cool air is drawn into the
tower from bottom
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 Natural Draft Cooling Towers
• No fan required
• Concrete tower (500 ft high and
400 ft in diameter at the base)
• Used for water flow rates above
200,000 gal/min.
• Used for large heat duties (utility
power stations)

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 TYPES OF COOLING TOWER
Natural Draft Cooling Towers
• Commonly used in
Southwestern United states (Humidity is found to be very low)
Middle east (Humidity is found to be very low)
Europe (Temperature are generally very low)

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• Air drawn across • Air drawn up
Types of Cooling Towers through falling
falling water
• Fill located water
outside tower • Fill located
Natural Draft Cooling Towers
inside tower

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 Natural Draft Cooling Towers

• There are two main types of natural draft

towers:
– Cross flow tower (left figure): air is drawn across
the falling water and the fill is located outside the
tower
– Counter flow tower (right figure): air is drawn up
through the falling water and the fill is therefore
located inside the tower, although design depends
on specific site conditions

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 Natural Draft Cooling Towers

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 Types of Cooling Towers
Mechanical Draft Cooling Towers

• Large fans to force air through circulated water

• Water falls downwards over fill surfaces and increase contact
time between air and water: maximum heat transfer.
• Cooling rates depend on many parameters: fan diameter,
speed of operation, fills for system.
• Available in a large range of capacities.
• Can be grouped to achieve desired capacity, e.g. 8-cell tower

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 Types of Cooling Towers

Mechanical Draft Cooling Towers

Three types
• Forced draft
• Induced draft cross flow
• Induced draft counter flow

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 Types of Cooling Towers

Forced Draft Cooling Towers

• Air blown through tower by
centrifugal fan at air inlet
• Advantages: suited for high
air resistance & fans are
relatively quiet
• Disadvantages: recirculation
due to high air-entry and low
air-exit velocities

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 Forced Draft Cooling Towers

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 Forced Draft Cooling Towers

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 Forced Draft
Cooling Towers

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 Types of Cooling Towers
Induced Draft Cooling Towers

• Two types
• Cross flow
• Counter flow
• Advantage: less recirculation
than forced draft towers
• Disadvantage: fans and motor
drive mechanism require
weather-proofing
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 Types of Cooling Towers
Induced Draft Counter Flow CT
• Air flow is directly opposite to the water flow
• Hot water enters at the top
• Air enters at bottom and exits at top
• Uses forced and induced draft fans

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 Types of Cooling Towers
Induced Draft Cross Flow CT
• Air flow is directed perpendicular to the water flow
• Water enters top and passes over fill
• Air enters on one side or opposite sides
• Induced draft fan draws air across fill at top of tower

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• Drift –
– Water droplets that are carried out of the cooling tower with the exhaust air.
– Drift droplets have the same concentration of impurities as the water entering the
tower.
– The drift rate is typically reduced by employing baffle-like devices, called drift
eliminators, through which the air must travel after leaving the fill and spray
zones of the tower.
• Blow-out –
– Water droplets blown out of the cooling tower by wind, generally at the air inlet
openings.
– Water may also be lost, in the absence of wind, through splashing or misting.
– Devices such as wind screens, louvers, splash deflectors and water diverters are
used to limit these losses.
• Plume –
– The stream of saturated exhaust air leaving the cooling tower.
– The plume is visible when water vapor it contains condenses in contact with
cooler ambient air, like the saturated air in one's breath fogs on a cold day.
– Under certain conditions, a cooling tower plume may present fogging or icing
hazards to its surroundings.
• Blow-down –
– The portion of the circulating water flow that is removed in order to maintain the
amount of dissolved solids and other impurities at an acceptable level.
– It may be noted that higher TDS (total dissolved solids) concentration in solution
results in greater potential cooling tower efficiency. However the higher the TDS
concentration, the greater the risk of scale, biological growth and corrosion.

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• Approach –
– The approach is the difference in temperature between the cooled-water
temperature and the entering-air wet bulb temperature (twb).
– Since the cooling towers are based on the principles of evaporative
cooling, the maximum cooling tower efficiency depends on the wet bulb
temperature of the air.
– The wet-bulb temperature is a type of temperature measurement that
reflects the physical properties of a system with a mixture of a gas and a
vapor, usually air and water vapor
• Range –
– The range is the temperature difference between the water inlet and
water exit.
• Fill –
– Inside the tower, fills are added to increase contact surface as well as
contact time between air and water. Thus they provide better heat
transfer. The efficiency of the tower also depends on them. There are
two types of fills that may be used:
– Film type fill (causes water to spread into a thin film)
– Splash type fill (breaks up water and interrupts its vertical progress)

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