The Design of Cooling Towers

As most of us know, a cooling tower is used in commercial AC systems, generally in big factories and other buildings that use lots of heat and power, and need to be cooled down. The cooling tower does what its name suggestions, and it cools warm water from the system's chiller condenser, the tower is always found at the final point of the heat transfer procedure, as after the cooling tower, the excess temperature is then transferred into the atmosphere. A tower generally can be found in one of two designs, the cross flow and the counter flow design. The purpose of a cooling tower is obviously to cool water, and while this was only a very brief introduction to cooling towers,

The Cross Flow Tower:

With cross flow tower, the flow of the water has to be at a very specific angle to the flow of the air in order for it to work, and this angle is the right angle. A cooling tower that uses cross flow technology will be box-shaped and it works by pumping the warm water to the top of the tower, where it is then distributed to the sides of the tower and dropped through small holes there. Then, plastic air intake louvers, which can be found at the side of the tower allow the water to spread out while dropping, and following this air is then sucked from the outside in to cooling tower by a few fans. This air, once it comes into contact with the dropping water is then cooled, and falls to the bottom of the tower. This cooled water is pumped out once again and circulated through the chiller, then the excess heat from the chiller is transferred to the water once again, and the warm water is once more transferred to the top of the tower, meaning that the cycle begins again.

The Counter Flow Tower:

The second type of tower, the counter flow, works a little differently, as they have the passage of air flowing directly against the flow of water. Although the water follows the same pattern as cross flow cooling towers, as the water is allowed to spread out. However, these towers are more funnel shaped and there is only one single fan at the center of the tower as opposed to several and fitted below that fan is the rotating water pipe distributor. The pipes of the water distributor shoot water from one side, and this action rotates the distributor. Thanks to the distributor, the water is the dropped evenly over the air inlet louvers, and as the water drops, it meets the air current, and the air cools the water. The water that then collects at the bottom of the cooling tower is pumped into the chiller, heats up again and then returns to the cooling tower.

There is a wealth of information on them online. So if you'd like to know more about them, start looking online, and you will be able to discover more about them, from their history, the reasons of them and even how you could become involved with cooling tower companies, it's really up to you.