Cooling Towers

The need for cooling capacity is increasing globally. An expanding population and an ever-growing dependence on data increases the need for process cooling, centralized space cooling, and data center cooling. Meanwhile, in many places, water scarcity is a massive issue. In conventional, industrial cooling applications, the use of water for heat rejection is critical. Cooling towers and most evaporative fluid coolers depend heavily on water to reject waste heat to the atmosphere.

How often do you think about your cooling tower or the fill that provides the cooling engine for your process? Unfortunately, if you’re like many plant operators, your cooling tower is but one piece of equipment in your large facility, and its ranking on your priority list is probably lower than many other expensive and more intricate pieces of equipment in your plant.
Cooling tower customers want product innovations that can give them a greater amount of cooling for the energy used. In this age of shrinking operational budgets, they also seek ways to reduce installation and maintenance costs. These customer needs cut across industry lines, whether for light industrial or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) applications, or for power and process cooling operations.
Cooling towers may contain a variety of combustible material, including polyvinyl chloride (PVC) fill, fiberglass reinforced polyester (FRP) casing, fan stacks, fan decks, fan blades, and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) and polypropylene nozzles, as well as wood and fiberglass structural components. Functioning cooling towers may also contain dry areas that could catch on fire when water flow is temporarily suspended during maintenance, or repairs involving electrical work or welding. In addition, fire damage in cooling towers can extend to the tower’s adjacent cells and to nearby buildings or equipment.
Gearboxes are used as speed reducers to slow the rotational speed from the incoming motor to the outgoing fan of a cooling tower. Companies operating high-capacity production plants, such as those in the chemical process and power industries, require cooling towers with large amounts of heat rejection capacity. Without gearbox technology, cooling tower motors would be massive to directly handle the torque required by the fan. Something so large and heavy would be too expensive and impractical.
The demand for advanced computing power rises year after year, but the more powerful the system, the more heat it generates. As data centers grow, they place higher demands on cooling equipment. Packing as much kilowatt and computer usage into as small a space as possible is key to reducing the cost and size of the facility. In doing this, data centers increase the power density of their systems, drawing more power, and generating more heat per unit area.
If you enjoy the occasional beverage from an aluminum can, there’s a decent chance the can was made by Ball Corporation, a container manufacturing giant with facilities across the world. The company’s facility in Saratoga Springs, New York, services beverage companies throughout the northeastern United States. The plant operates four production lines producing millions of aluminum cans per day.
The number of data centers in the United States continues to grow in response to the enormous amount of digital information stored and streamed. The massive computer power within these data centers generates heat, making efficient cooling a key building system requirement. Evaporative cooling towers are an integral part of many data center cooling systems.
Recent developments in factory-assembled cooling tower technology can increase cooling capacity per cell by up to 50%, expanding the applications for so called “package” towers supporting HVAC and industrial processes. Although field-erected towers have long been the preferred product for process cooling in power plants and heavy industry, new robust designs and materials coupled with cost-saving building techniques now make a new generation of modular products logical alternatives for a broader range of applications.  
Anecdotal reports from users of Tower Tech cooling towers across the U.S. have indicated the Tower Tech design provides substantial savings to the customer both in terms of lower chemical treatment requirements and substantial water savings. There are a number of mechanisms by which the Tower Tech design facilitates efficient, lower cost water treatment and usage. A few are described in this article.
The use of an industrial inhibited glycol and water mixture is recommended in most water chiller systems. Ethylene and Propylene are the two standard types of inhibited glycols commonly used. The main job of glycol is to prevent freezing of the process fluid and ensure consistent flow at the operating temperature. Inhibited glycols will also prevent formation of scale and corrosion while protecting metals such as brass, copper, steel, cast iron and aluminum. Water systems treated with an inhibited glycol will also be protected from algae and bacteria that can grow and degrade the fluid system performance. This brief provides ten basic tips for glycol users in water chilling operations.