Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Wet cooling towers or open-circuit Cooling Tower or evaporative cooling towers operate on the principle of evaporative cooling. The working coolant (usually water) is the evaporated fluid, and is exposed to the elements.
Wet cooling towers operate on the evaporative cooling principle, but are optimized to cool the water rather than the air. Cooling towers can often be found on large buildings or on industrial sites. They transfer heat to the environment from chillers, industrial processes, or the Rankine power cycle , for example.
The cooling towers of a large chilled water system. As part of a chilled water system, the condenser water absorbs heat from the refrigerant in the condenser barrel of the water chiller and is then sent via return lines to a cooling tower, which is a heat exchange device used to transfer waste heat to the atmosphere.
The evaporative cooling within a windtower causes the air in the tower to sink, driving circulation. This is called passive downdraught evaporative cooling (PDEC). It may also be generated using spray nozzles (which have a tendency to get blocked if the water is hard) or cold-water cooling coils (like hydronic underfloor heating in reverse).
District cooling is the cooling equivalent of district heating. Working on principles broadly similar to district heating, district cooling delivers chilled water to buildings like offices and factories. In winter, the source for cooling can often be seawater, so it is a cheaper resource than electricity to run compressors for cooling.
Cooling towers operate as large heat exchangers by absorbing the latent heat of vaporization of the working fluid and simultaneously evaporating cooling water to the atmosphere. While many substances can be used as the working fluid, water is usually chosen for its simple chemistry, relative abundance, low cost, and thermodynamic properties .
A Legionnaires' disease outbreak in a New Hampshire town that has sickened five people has been traced to contaminated water from a cooling tower. 5 people with Legionnaires' disease exposed ...
The term is most often used for smaller systems, typically table-top size, with input powers less than about 20 kW. Some can have input powers as low as 2–3 W. Large systems, such as those used for cooling the superconducting magnets in particle accelerators are more often called cryogenic refrigerators. Their input powers can be as high as 1 MW.