Cooling tower, an evaporative cooling unit works to reduce condenser water temperature.
The cooling tower always works with a water-cooled chiller. The primary work of the cooling tower is to reduce the condenser water temperature and help achieve the desired cooling effect in association with the chiller.
Now, how can we measure the cooling tower capacity? please check cooling tower tonnage calculation.
You might have seen the tall concrete structure in movies. Those are the cooling towers.
Primarily there are two types of cooling towers.
Types of Cooling tower
- Natural draft cooling tower
- Mechanical draft cooling tower
Natural Draft Cooling Towers
The following pictures show that tall bulky concrete structures are the Natural draft cooling-towers.
These natural draft cooling towers’ capacities are higher than those of mechanical draft cooling-towers.
Mechanical Draft Cooling Tower
The mechanical draft uses a fan with an electric motor to draw environmental air to cool the condenser water temperature.
The mechanical draft can also be classified into two categories.
- Induced draft cooling-towers
- Forces draft cooling-towers
Induced Draft Cooling-Towers
To explain in simple words; when you see an “Axial fan” for a cooling-tower. Then that is an induced draft cooling tower.
The following pictures are the induced draft cooling-towers. These types of cooling-tower draw environmental air into cooling-towers to reduce the condenser water temperature.
This type again falls into two categories.
- Induced draft Cross flow Cooling-tower
- Induced draft Counter flow Cooling-tower
Following are pictures of both cross-flow and counter-flow cooling-towers.
Drift Eliminators
Drift eliminators capture water droplets entrapped in the air stream that otherwise would be lost to the atmosphere.
Air inlet
This is the point for air entering the tower. The inlet may take up an entire side of a tower cross-flow design. In the case of counter-flow design; the air inlet shall be located low on the side or the bottom of the tower.
Forces draft cooling-towers
To assure the performance of cooling-towers. The Cooling Technology Institute certifies the rated flowrate at standard working conditions. Anyone can check the CTI certificate for cooling towers.