Cooling Towers

A cooling tower is a specialized heat exchanger in which air and water are brought into direct contact with each other to affect the transfer of heat. Every day, billions of gallons of water are used for cooling purposes. Cooling towers are a dependable means of removing heat from cooling water. Sound selection of a cooling tower can help your building perform efficiently.

Cooling tower fall into two main sub-divisions: natural draft and mechanical draft. Natural draft designs use very large concrete chimneys. These are typically found at power plants.

Mechanical draft cooling towers are much more common. There are three basic types of mechanical draft cooling towers.

Wet (or evaporative) towers are ones in which the water to be cooled comes in contact with outdoor air. These have the highest thermal efficiency. These also consume more water than do the following two types, but a 95 percent saving is significant.

In a dry tower, the water to be cooled flows within an extended heat transfer surface, for example, a finned tube coil over which atmospheric air is blown.

A wet-dry tower combines the function of the two previous types.

Buildings are commonly equipped with cooling towers as a critical component of air conditioning systems. Typically, cooling towers used for air conditioning consume up to one-quarter of a commercial building's total water use. Proper operation and maintenance of your building's cooling towers can save you energy, water and money.

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