Signs That Cooling Tower Designs Need to Be Adjusted

Industrial & Manufacturing Blog

Properly designed and installed cooling towers can perform seamlessly for long. Improperly designed cooling towers use a lot of energy and develop defects frequently. This article discusses some symptoms of a cooling tower whose design may need to be adjusted. Use this information to avoid wasting money on frequent repairs that could easily be resolved by altering the design of your cooling tower.

Dry Air Disease

Dry air disease refers to what happens when the water flowing through the cooling tower is below the minimum amount needed for the proper functioning of that cooling tower. That insufficient water flow causes scale to form on the dry patches of the fill in the tower. The scale forms when air causes the limited water in the fill to evaporate and form scale.

Scale formation starts worsening because the fans in the tower will speed up in order to increase the rate of evaporative heat loss. This increased running of the fans causes more sections of the fill to dry as more air is blown over the limited water available.

The best remedy to dry air disease is to adjust the settings of the incoming water so that more water is allowed into the tower. This will ensure that the fill is wet enough to facilitate heat loss from the water entering the cooling tower.

Cooling Tower Flooding

Have you ever noticed that water overflows from the cooling tower when you shut the tower down at the end of the day? That flooding may be indicative of a design flaw that needs to be corrected. A properly designed cooling tower has an appropriate sump basin that takes all the water from the piping and related features that supply water to the tower. A small sump basin is unable to take all this water. The result is that the excess water will collect and overflow from the tower. This causes the tower to be expensive to maintain because treated water is frequently lost. An adjustment of the sump basin can put an end to this flooding.

Pump Cavitation

Pump cavitation may also point to a defect in the design of the cooling tower. The absence of a water trap (sump basin) causes the water inside the tower to go below the recommended level since some water will overflow once the tower is shut down for the day. Consequently, the pump will not be primed when you restart the tower the next day. Such a pump will suffer from cavitation. Avoid repeat episodes of pump cavitation by installing a water trap on your cooling tower.

Many of the problems above can be avoided by hiring an experienced cooling tower designer to design a cooling system that is suitable for your specific application. Such an expert will test each component upon installation in order to fine-tune the system so that it functions according to the design specifications.

2 November 2016