What are your thoughts on a heating, cooling and ventilation (HVAC) system that is friendly to the environment? Well, this is what you get when you install a cooling tower on your business premises. The system relies on recycling water and the ability to transfer heat between two mediums: water and air. In the end, you enjoy subsidised air conditioning costs and overall production costs. Heated water is sprinkled over cooling tower fill media. The water encounters incoming air entering the tower's bottom section. Heat transfer follows so that excess heat exhausts the tower by the action of special fans. The water collects and cools down in readiness for re-circulation. Read more for other things you might not know about cooling towers:
Working Mechanism
Primarily, cooling towers are tools built for cooling water. They have numerous parts such as the distribution system, gears, fans and drift separators. Cooling towers rely on the rule of evaporative cooling with mechanical or natural ventilation used to cool the water circulating in the system. The process begins with pumping hot water to the top section of the cooling tower. The distribution system then takes over and sprays the hot water over fill media. Ideally, this happens at the same time the cooling tower takes up air through the bottom side. This forces water to evaporate as heat exchange happens and your facility gets a cooling effect.
Fill Media
If you want heat exchange to happen efficiently, you need something that prolongs the contact between the hot water and the air. This is why you need fill media in your cooling tower. The fills increase the surface area for heat exchange, ensuring that the hot water cools more rapidly than it would in their absence. There are many types of fill media, such as splash fill and film fill. Splash fill comprises horizontal slats made from PVC plastics or wood. When the water encounters these bars, it breaks into small droplets that increase the contact between water and air. On the other hand, film fill has thin sheets and a rough, textured surface. The corrugated surface creates the necessary large surface area, but you need to be wary as fill media works best with clean, good quality water.
Applications
Cooling towers are suitable for both large- and small-scale industrial applications. They are an economical option for anyone who wants to start a business in industries that demand high volumes of output from their HVAC. These include cold storage, food production, petrochemical, steel mills and metal casting.