62-08: Plastic Trends in Cooling Tower Design

A cooling tower is basically a heat exchanging device using the principle of evaporative water cooling to exchange the heat load from the circulating water to air. The heat thus transferred to the air is dissipated in the atmosphere. The size of the installation by comparison to heat exchangers as we normally know them is quite large, due primarily to the large quantities of water and relatively small temperature ranges through which it is desired to cool this water. The size is also controlled to a large extent by the required air circulation in the tower. Many towers are in exis­tence today which handle 100,000 gallons per minute of water at a temperature level of-100 - 110° F, cooling this water through a range of 15 to 20°.