Cooling Towers: an easy to understand guide

As the name suggests, cooling towers are devices specially designed to reduce heat in a system by different means. They help to avoid overheating of the system that can turn into a disaster in just a few minutes! That extra heat can ruin your system! Having such units can help you stay away from the extra repairing costs due to the burnt units. Knowing the advantages of having this device, let’s get into deeper information about them. In this article, I want to share with you all that I know about two of the most popular cooling towers and then compare them together to ease your way toward choosing the right one for your specific purpose.

Now, what are these two popular types? Cross flow and counter flow!



 

Crossflow cooling tower

This type removes the extra heat from the hot water of the basin and turns it into cold water by the means of an upward airflow in the tower. With the help of a fan on top of the unit, the flow of the air becomes possible. This fan enables the airflow through fills and louvers and the water’s perpendicular intercept with the airflow, creates the desired outcome.

What pulls the hot water from hot water basin into the cold water basin is the force of gravity and nothing else! That makes this type an affordable choice since it uses less effort and fewer parts to cool down the pouring water.

I already mentioned a number of its parts (such as hot water basin and the fan), other parts are: Spray nozzles, fills, drift eliminator, louvers, water outlet, float, drain, makeup water inlet, and overflow. These are pretty much everything that makes up a cross flow cooling tower. Although based on the design, a few things might differ, but these are usually used for general purposes.

As I already mentioned, this type is cheaper compared to other similar types due to its specific design. Plus, the ability to inspect the inside of the device easier than other counterparts makes it a good choice because the maintenance becomes easy as well.

If you are interested to know more about Cross flow cooling tower, check out this link and learn from the experts in this field.

 

Counterflow cooling tower

The other popular type is Counterflow design. This device also uses air to cool down the hot water by passing through the fill that’s located underneath the hot water basin. The opposite direction of the airflow and the water enables the process to take place in this tower type which explains the name of this design. The fan at the top of the water distribution nozzles has been designed to suck the air into the fill media. And by removing the extra heat, the cold water then pours down into the cold water basin located at the bottom of the cooling tower.

The units that make up this type are pretty much the same as the other type; including: Hot and cold water basin, float, spray nozzles, fan, fill, water outlet, drain, air inlet louvers, makeup water inlet, overflow, pressurized piping and drift eliminator.

Among the advantages of using this design, I can mention its low power consumption as well as low maintenance.

A lot is going on inside counter flow design and since I want to keep this article simple for everyone to enjoy, you can visit here for more detailed information about this cooling tower type.

 

Crossflow vs Counterflow cooling towers

Let’s briefly compare these two designs to better choose the right one for your system.

Since I already mentioned the airflow through both of these types, you already know that the airflow in the cross flow type is perpendicular compared to the water flow in the fill, while in the counter flow it’s in the opposite direction of the water stream.

The maintenance in the cross flow is much easier than the counter flow due to easier access to the internal parts. Easy access to the nozzles and the mid-plenum (even when the device is running) is also another advantage of cross flow design. In the counter flow design, you should turn off the tower to enter and access the internal parts.

One of the great advantages of the counterflow design, though, is for where there are space limitations. This design has the ability to have more acceptable configurations for applications in such spaces!

Another point to mention when comparing counterflow and cross flow design is that the cross flow is a better choice for cold environments since it can avoid water freezing in the fills to some extent.

The device must produce lower levels of noise for application and the crossflow achieves this goal since the bottom of the fill is in contact with the surface of the cold water basin. Though it can also be achieved by the installation of sound attenuators as well.

But all in all, depending on your specific application, it’s totally up to you to decide which one is the best fit for you. And if you’re still not sure about your choice, you can see a more detailed comparison between these two in this article!


Care to share your knowledge on the subject with us? Comment below and let us learn from your experience!

**

Sources:

 https://www.linquip.com/blog/crossflow-cooling-tower/

https://www.linquip.com/blog/counterflow-cooling-tower/

https://www.linquip.com/blog/crossflow-vs-counterflow-cooling-towers/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spray_nozzle


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