Peter Phelps, Jr.

Phelps Engineering Company

Laguna Niguel, California

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Some Definitions
Why Evaporative Cooling Towers?
What Are the Water Uses in a Cooling Tower?
How Much Water Are We Talking About?
What Can Be Done to Reduce Fresh Water Usage
Alternate Water Sources
Make Better Use of the Water You Have
Hybrid Wet-Dry Towers and Vapor Recovery

Definitions

Splash Fill

Film Fill

Definitions
Range or Temperature RangeHot water temperature
Cold water temperature
Hot water = 120F
Cold water = 90F

Range = 30F

Approach or Approach TemperatureCold water temperature

Wet Bulb temperature
Cold water = 90F
Wet bulb = 80F
Approach = 10F

Why Evaporative Cooling Towers?

They transfer heat not only through sensible heat,
but though latent heat.
Their theoretical thermal limit is the wet bulb
temperature, which often has a 20 advantage over the
dry bulb, or more.
There is direct contact between the air and the water.
There are no barriers in between such as the tubes of a
heat exchanger.
At one time cooling towers were the considered the
ultimate in water conservation equipment. Only about
3% of the water used vs. once-through cooling.

What Are the Water Uses in a Cooling Tower?

Evaporation is the
greatest user of water.

Blowdown is the next

largest user.
Drift is the smallest
user of water, and is
much smaller than
the other two.

How Much Water Are We Talking About?

Evaporation can be estimated by the following relationshipEvaporation(GPM) = Flow(GPM) X Temp. Range(F) X .0009
For example: A tower with 100,000 GPM and a 24 range
has evaporation of approximately 100,000 X 24 X .0009 = 2,160 GPM

A residential swimming pool can hold

around 25,000 GPM. Your make-up
water would fill that pool every 12
minutes, and youd fill 5 pools every
hour, and thats just evaporation for
one tower.

How Much Water for Blowdown?

Blowdown is how much water you must remove
from the tower to keep scale from forming and
other harmful contaminants from reaching too
high a level.
The amount of blowdown depends on your
Cycles Of Concentration or COC. Cycles of
concentration are the number of times solids
in your circulating flow are concentrated
compared to the number of solids in your
make-up water. Blowdown might be 2/3 or
1/2 or less of your evaporation depending on
high a COC you can live with.

Drift
Drift is tiny compared to evaporation and blowdown.
Modern drift eliminators reduce the drift loss to
.001% and lower.
A 100,000 GPM tower will have a drift loss of 1
GPM at that rate.
Poor drift elimination can add up.

What Can Be Done to Reduce Fresh Water Usage

Drift- If you feel water raining down from the
tower then you have a drift problem. Every 2GPM
you save is over 1,000,000 gallons/year. In
addition, there are benefits of longer life of your air
moving equipment and nearby pumps, pipes,
motors, and substations. Often the repairs are
simple point source repairs, and not an entire
towers worth of
drift eliminators.

Blowdown Reduction
Raising the cycles of concentration (COC) means
less water you are going to need as make-up.
COC
2
3
4
5
6

% Water Savings
33
50
55.6
58.3
60
Check with water treatment companies to see if there are
opportunities to increase your COC such as softeners,
filtration, etc. There are companies that claim zero
blowdown, but we do not know of industrial examples of
this.

Alternate Sources of Water

Reclaimed Water

Seawater

RO Water

Make Better Use of the Water You Have Now

Phelps Engineering specializes in the upgrade of older cooling towers. It
is possible to improve the thermal capability of your tower by 3-4F
without any increase in water usage.
For example, a tower has a flow of 50,000GPM and a range of 20F. Its
hot water temperature is 110 and its cold water is 90 at an 80 wet bulb.
If you improve the tower by 3 degrees you have lowered both the hot
water and cold water temperature by 3. The hot water is now 107 and
the cold water is now 87. Neither the flow nor the range of 20 changed,
but you are now operating your plant more efficiently with colder cooling
water.
We looked at case last month where the energy savings alone were over
$750,000/year for a 3.5 improvement in cooling water temperatures.
Also, is the right flow getting to the crucial exchangers?

Wet Dry Hybrid Cooling

Take advantage of dry cooling to reduce or eliminate the duty the wet
tower sees during cool times of the year or the night. Every percentage
the dry cooling cools is a savings by a like percentage in evaporation.
Example: 5 of a 20range is cooled in the dry section at night.
This is a 25% savings in make-up water for that period.

Vapor Recovery

5% or more?