Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Cooling Towers But Were Afraid to Ask

Delta cooling towers

The history of cooling towers is long and storied, as manufacturers of cooling towers are well aware. Cooling towers are tall, cylindrical concrete towers with an open top. They are used for cooling water or condensing steam resulting from industrial processes. As well, cooling towers are a descendant of 19th century of condensers that were used with the steam engine.

Did you know that manufacturers of cooling towers create closed loop cooling systems that rely on air strippers? Closed loop cooling systems can have a significant impact on lowering the operating costs related to water cooled industrial machinery and associated equipment. Examples of these are air compressors, turbines, furnaces, and hydraulics. essentially, any machinery that needs cool clean water to properly operate are examples of closed loop cooling systems.

Closed circuit dry cooling towers rely solely on air to cool the working fluid so it is close to the dry bulb air temperature. This is not the case for a wet cooling tower. A normal big refinery that processes 40,000 metric tons of crude oil per day will circulate about 80,000 cubic meters of water per hour through its wet cooling tower system. The usual reason for using a large, industrial wet cooling tower is to get rid of the heat absorbed in the circulating cooling water systems found in natural gas processing plants, power plants, petrochemical plants, petroleum refineries, food processing plants, semi-conductor plants, as well as many other types of industrial facilities.

In the past, the manufacturers of cooling towers had to be called by companies needing to schedule major repairs or replacements according to scheduled shutdown that was planned in advance. Currently, manufacturers of cooling towers report that shutdowns do not happen all that often, which does not leave much time to perform replacement and updating tasks essential for business. That is why a wet cooling tower is so important to modern industry and why manufacturers of cooling towers are highly valued within the business community.

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