WATER & WASTEWATER

Cooling Towers: Efficiency

Waiting to Happen

Courtesy: GE Water & Process Technologies

Cooling towers serve the vital role of cooling water for power plant heat exchange
equipment. Sustaining excellent system performance is important because a one-
degree increase in water temperature can cause a 2% increase in energy usage.
Proper maintenance and a few upgrades could improve a cooling tower’s efficiency,
while also saving water in the process.
Abby L. Harvey

T
he smallest inefficacy in a power plant
can cost a generator greatly, and many
energy generators need to look no fur-
ther than their aging cooling towers to find a
hotbed of potential inefficacies, slowly leach-
ing their profits. As the efficiency of a cool-
ing tower stumbles, the temperature in the
tower rises, increasing energy consumption
in the unit by as much as 2% per one-degree
increase. The good news is, from the fans to
the nozzles, to the fill media, and even the
water itself, opportunities to ramp up the ef-
ficiency of a cooling tower abound.
Film Fill for the Win
Of course, nobody intends to build an inef-
ficient system, but many of today’s cooling
towers are relics of the past, and while they
may have once been state-of-the-art, they fall
far behind today’s standards. One of the main
areas that older plants lag behind in is fill
material. Some decades-old cooling towers
still in use continue to use plastic, fiberglass,
or wood splash fill. This system positions
splash bars to break falling water into drop-
lets. Splash fill is better suited for crossflow
towers, according to SPX Cooling Technolo-
gies Inc., because the air can easily flow
horizontally through the vertical full-height
fill. Newer counter-flow towers can integrate
splash fill or newer film fill systems.
Around the 1980s, cooling tower efficien-
cy efforts got a boost with the development of
better performing fill media. “A breakthrough
for the counterflow fills of the 1980s was the
introduction of PVC film fill packs,” Terry
Dwyer, director of field erected products for
SPX, said. These new fill types “increase the
surface area of the fill in a given cubic foot
of the cooling tower, so the PVC—the plastic
fill packs—increase the surface area, which
increases the heat transfer.”
In fact, according to Dwyer, the easiest
way to increase a cooling tower’s efficiency
quickly is to change out the fill media. “We
have other, higher performing fills today than
we had many years ago,” Dwyer said. “It’s
kind of like with a car, the fuel economy of
a car today is better than it was 20 years ago.
A lot of that is the engine design and technol-
ogy.”
Today’s high-performance film fills boast
nearly twice the thermal performance of
splash fill. Film fill consists of stacks of lab-
yrinth-like material through which the water
and air flow in opposite directions. Film fill
increased greatly the exposure of the water

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POWER March 2017

1. Turning tides. More efficient cooling towers reduce the amount of water withdrawn
from lakes, rivers, or the ocean for thermal power plant cooling needs. Courtesy: GE Water &
Process Technologies
surface to the air, resulting in a much more
efficient transfer of heat.
However, film fill isn’t without its disad-
vantages. As noted, while splash fill works
to break water into droplets by—as the name
suggests—making it splash off relatively
wide-set bars within the tower, film fill di-
rects the water through small funnels. Un-
fortunately, and unsurprisingly, most cooling
towers aren’t running with filtered water. The
water being used in these towers is gener-
ally pretty dirty, full of mineral and biologi-
cal sediment that can easily clog the fill with
microbiological growth, fouling, or scaling.
Rough Waters
While splash fill is at a disadvantage to more
modern fill styles in cooling efficiency, it’s
not without its upsides. Splash fill is less
dense, and thus more forgiving of difficult
water. Water heavy in sediment can clog film
fill far more easily than splash fill, but in gen-
eral, the tradeoff is not worth it as chemical
treatments to help deal with difficult water
are advancing quickly.
The four main water quality issues power
generators face in keeping their towers run-
ning in top shape are corrosion, scaling, foul-
ing, and microbiological activity.
Corrosion occurs when chemicals in the
water eat away at the components of the
cooling tower. This can result in a loss of heat
transfer, and in turn decreased efficiency.
Corrosion can also lead to equipment failure,
which in turn can lead to plant downtime and
equipment replacement costs.
Scaling is the buildup of dissolved miner-
als on equipment. This too can result in the
reduction of the heat exchange ability of the
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March 2017 POWER
system as the scale can act as insulation,
making it much more difficult for the system
to effectively cool.
Similar to scaling, fouling is the buildup
of suspended particles. While scaling is lim-
ited to minerals, however, fouling applies
to anything from organic matter to oils. At
best, fouling inhibits heat transfer the same
way scaling does, by acting as an insulator.
At worst, fouling can completely plug fill,
reducing the evaporative areas of the system,
dealing a blow to the efficiency of the sys-
tem.
Finally, microbiological activity refers to
the impact that any microorganism living in
the system has on the plant. The microorgan-
ism can be suspended in the water or may
grow on the surfaces of the cooling tower
equipment, again resulting in reduced heat
transfer due to the insulation and blockage of
the fill material.
Cooling towers use massive amounts of
water, so it’s no surprise that municipali-
ties and states have in many cases delegated
the lowest quality of the resources for use
by power generators. In 2010, water with-
drawals for thermoelectric power accounted
for 45% of total withdrawals in the United
States, according to the U.S. Geologic Sur-
vey’s most recent national water use report.
However, water usage for thermoelectric-
power generation has been on the decline
(Figure 1), the report notes. Between 2005
and 2010 water withdraws in that category
decreased 20%.
To preserve freshwaters, some areas of
the country require cooling towers to use
municipal gray water or to cycle their tow-
ers more (see “Reclaimed Water Reduces
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WATER & WASTEWATER
Stress on Freshwater Supplies” in this issue
of POWER). This was the case for a client of
GE Water & Process Technologies.
“Our customers were asked to use munici-
pal gray water. This is the wastewater from
a municipal plant. When they were zoned
and started up they could not use fresh water
from the river or the lake, and these are very
tough to treat waters,” Peter Macios, execu-
tive product manager for the company, said.
GE Water & Process Technologies offers
a wide range of customizable chemical and
equipment treatment options for generators
dealing with difficult waters. “We were able
to develop and design programs that allowed
our customers to—number one—operate as
efficiently [as possible] with the use of that
water and negate all the effects on … micro-
biological controls, disposition, and corro-
sion,” Macios said.
Chemical treatment of cooling tower wa-
ter is a complex balancing act. Unfortunately,
many chemical treatments to address one is-
sue negatively impact chemical treatments
to address another. Fortunately, GE believes
it has found the right balance, developing
chemical treatments that do not adversely
interact.
“With traditional programs, when you
set a biocide or microbiological control, it
always degraded the corrosion inhibition
and deposit control,” Macios said. “In other
words, the programs are always at odds with
one another. At GE, we’re able to keep both
microbiological deposit control and corro-
sion in check without affecting any of the
programs.”
GE’s GenGard water treatment technol-
ogy works across the pH spectrum to inhibit
corrosion, while GE’s Spectrus microbiolog-
ical control agent keeps microbial species,
including bacteria, algae, yeast, and fungi,
under control. Unlike other chemical treat-
ment options, the two technologies can be
used together. “The beauty of the program is
they’re synergistic. The oxidizer [Spectrus]
doesn’t degrade the GenGard program. Spec-
trus doesn’t have an effect on the GenGard,”
Macios said.
Moving Parts
Even when a cooling tower’s fill is clean and
operating efficiently, inefficiencies may still
be lurking. One efficiency issue that often
receives little attention is the performance of
the spray nozzles at the top of the tower.
It has generally been accepted that a water
spray is going to take the shape of an um-
brella, resulting in a circular spray pattern.
The problem with that is that it is difficult
to line up circles to evenly distribute water
over a surface. If the circles are lined up to
just touch, entire areas of the fill media are
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2. Square-spray nozzle. Curtis Technologies has developed a nozzle with a square spray
pattern, improving the water distribution in the fill media. Courtesy: Curtis Technologies
left dry.
To fix that problem, tower designers move
the nozzles closer, overlapping the spray.
However, that action plan still results in an
uneven water distribution, flooding the fill
media in the areas of overlap. When a part
of the fill becomes flooded, air cannot travel
through, which reduces the efficiency of the
plant.
“The quality of the air over water mix-
ture determines the efficiency of that heat
transfer. Of course, I think the industry has
known that forever,” Howard Curtis, inventor
of Curtis Technologies’ variable flow nozzle
(VFN, Figure 2), said.
Curtis’s VFN allows for an even distribu-
tion of water and in turn, better cooling effi-
ciency. “We developed a nozzle that produces
a square water pattern, and it’s hydraulically
balanced, so we get better water balance over
the fill media, which means you’re going to
get better air to water contact,” Curtis said.
“The most economical thing you can do is to
change out your nozzles to bring sometimes
10 percent or more thermal efficiency.”
Another piece of equipment that often gets
overlooked in the search for low-hanging
fruit is the cooling tower fan, Dwyer said.
“The important part of the heat transfer is the
air movement through the fill media,” he said.
“If you can increase your airflow through the
media it really very directly impacts the heat
transfer. So, the more air, the more cooling,
the more cooling, the more efficient. If you
can take an old fan that isn’t very efficient
and put a more modern design in there, you
should be able to increase your airflow and
with your increased airflow have better cool-
ing and better efficiency.”
Identifying the Problem
As with most things in life, the first step to
addressing a cooling tower efficiency prob-
lem is to identify where the problem is. When
a power generator is feeling the effects of an
inefficient cooling tower, pinpointing the
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source of the problem quickly and accurately
is vital to developing an effective game plan.
That’s where companies like Quantum
Technical Services come in. The company
offers a cooling tower efficiency study per-
formed during peak operation to determine
the thermal operating condition of the cool-
ing tower. Such an audit studies the air and
water flow of the unit, an evaluation of the
heat transfer area, and infrared thermal scans
of the tower to identify any potential prob-
lems.
When possible the company also tries to
take into account the original design of the
tower in determining if it is operating as it
was intended. “I believe this is the best thing
to do,” Paul Chila, an engineering consul-
tant with Quantum Technical Services, said.
“When [the tower] was built it was designed
to run under certain percent efficiency. What
we do is, wherever I can, try to dig up those
3. Some assembly required. SPX Cooling Technologies’ NC Everest factory assem-
bled cooling tower can be shipped to a power generator in just a few pieces, requiring minimal
field assembly. Courtesy: SPX Cooling Technologies
www.powermag.com
old design sheets, and once we get our picture
in place, compare the measured efficiency
versus what the design was to let them know
where they’re at and we compare everything
on the spec sheets.”
Taking the original design specifications
of a tower into account allows the company
to first determine if the plant is operating as
it should be, before determining how well it
could be operating. “We had one fairly re-
cently where ... they were so far off spec on
the flow rate being supplied to the tower that
we told them, you need to fix this problem
first, and then we can come back and reevalu-
ate the tower,” Chila said. “It can be a process
where you need to say, you need to address
this, this is a big factor.”
For counterflow towers, the company’s
GamaScan technology can offer a helpful
picture of what is happening inside the fill
material. “GamaScan takes a look literally
through the fill, and it gives us a density pro-
file,” Chila said. “From that, we can tell if
the film fill is being fouled and if it is foul-
ing fairly uniform across the cell. That alone,
just by the amount of fouling that we have
the ability to measure, that’s obviously going
to affect the efficiency of how that tower is
performing.”
Regularly assessing cooling tower perfor-
mance, no matter how old or new equipment
may be, allows the operator to determine if
their treatment programs are working. “I’ve
got quite a few that are the newer style—with
the film fill—that were built within the last
two to three years, and they just brought us
out and said, ‘Come and get the baseline,’ ”
Chila said. Establishing such a baseline
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4. Sizing Up. Like SPX Cooling Technologies’ NC Everest cooling tower, the company’s F400 tower also comes largely assembled. However,
because of the tower’s larger size more field-assembly is required. Courtesy: SPX Cooling Technologies
makes it easier for an operator to determine
if their tower is starting to drag.
GE also offers regular maintenance and
monitoring of their treatment programs. Us-
ing a water monitoring system called InSight,
GE can track in real time what is happening
inside a customer’s cooling tower. The prod-
uct allows customers to quickly react to any
problems that may arise. Before such real-
time tracking technology became available,
operators were forced to be reactive instead
of proactive when issues threatened their
tower efficiency. “If you think about it, when
you do it manually, it’s always a rearview
mirror look. You get the data, you assess it,
and it’s already passed,” Macios said. “The
idea is: Can I pull the data, run the analyt-
ic, and know what’s going on in my system
now?”
Saying Goodbye to Inefficiency
While there are many options for upgrad-
ing cooling towers to improve efficiency, at
some point it might be time to trade your
1975 crossflow in for a shiny new counter-
flow model. Replacing cooling towers is not
a decision taken lightly of course, but should
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March 2017 POWER
a tower become so degraded or inefficient
that the generator risks being taken offline
or worse, suffering a collapse, the pros may
outweigh the cons.
While cooling tower technology and de-
sign has improved significantly in the last
several years, many generators have opted to
upgrade their older towers instead of starting
from scratch. “There are thousands of cool-
ing tower cells that were built in the 60s and
70s that were an older style cooling tower,
primarily crossflow cooling tower with
splash fill,” Dwyer said.
Replacing a cooling tower doesn’t always
mean replacing the whole thing from the
ground up. It is possible to gut a crossflow
tower and convert it to a counterflow unit.
“That can be a bit of a challenge, because
sometimes it’s hard to fit the counterflow
cooling tower into the same footprint, and
you have to do a bunch of piping modifica-
tions, but even if you had an old counterflow
cooling tower, you can replace the fill in it
… with a more modern heat transfer media,”
Dwyer said.
However, if it becomes clear to a genera-
tor that their old, inefficient cooling tower
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WATER & WASTEWATER
has to go, options for replacement are not as
burdensome as they once were. SPX offers a
line of factory assembled cooling towers that
can be shipped largely complete to a site. The
smaller line, the NC Everest (Figure 3), can
be shipped anywhere in the country in just a
few pieces. Once the tower arrives at the site,
it is bolted together with minimum field as-
sembly required. “Those six large pieces bolt
together in the field in hours. What we’ve
basically done is moved the long duration of
field assembly into a factory environment,”
Dwyer explained.
SPX also offers a larger version of their
factory assembled cooling tower, the F400
(Figure 4). Because of the larger size of the
tower, however, shipping of the factory-as-
sembled pieces becomes expensive quickly.
The decision to upgrade or replace usually
boils down to dollars and cents. “If it costs
$10,000 to fix your car and it’s only going
to last two more years, you’ll probably just
decide to go ahead and buy a new car for
$15,000,” Dwyer said. The same methodol-
ogy can often be used when cooling tower
choices are evaluated. ■
—Abby L. Harvey is a POWER reporter.
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