What is the role of cooling towers?

Firstly, a cooling tower is used to cool the water :

• Either alone, or in addition to chillers for HVAC application: office buildings, shopping malls, hospitals, university campus, data centres, etc.
• All industrial process requiring its production cycle to be cooled : sugar mills, distilleries, petrochemicals, agri-food industry, Iron & steel production, R&D, power plant generation, etc.

The cooling operates through an air/water exchange surface (packing or infill), this air is directly in contact with the water and allows, by evaporation of a few quantities, to reduce its temperature. In this way, it is then possible to cold water to a lower temperature than dry ambient one.

What are the benefits of cooling towers?

Cooling systems optimize performance by:

• Controlling the electric consumption,
• Lowering its water consumption,
• Limiting maintenance downtime for ever-increasing equipment availability and controlled operating costs.

What kind of cooling tower for what kind of application ?

The choice of a cooling tower is subjected to a personalized study to answer each specific requirement:

• application type, industrial or HVAC,
• water quality to be cooled (preponderant choice of the infill),
• thermal power to be rejected and / or water flow to be cooled,
• required cold water temperature,
• dedicated area for its installation and the environment according to sound levels or visual requirements (plume abatement).

Open, closed or hybrid cooling tower ?

The cooling towers can be constituted by two types of cooling circuit: an open circuit or closed circuit. The type of cooling system is going to be decisive for the exact way in which heat transmission occurs.

Indeed, the efficiency of the processes is directly linked to the operating temperature of the water circuits.

Therefore, evaporative cooling remains the most economical process. Cold water temperatures are reach, lower than the ambient temperature.

Open circuit cooling tower: 

An open cooling towers has no physical separation between user circuit (process) and cooling tower circuit. The water to be cooled goes directly inside the cooling tower, distributed at the top of the equipment homogeneously over the hole surface of the infill. Directly in contact with the water, the air, by evaporation of a few quantities, reduces its temperature. A mechanical fan, induced drat or forced draft, allows the air to go against the water current. The cold water is then collected in the basin to go back to user process.

Main benefits :

• The equipment allows reaching the lower water temperatures possible.
• Compact equipment.

Closed circuit cooling tower: 

A closed cooling tower has a physical separation between the user circuit (process) and the cooling tower circuit. The water to be cooled goes through a plate heat exchanger coupled together with an open circuit cooling tower. In this way, both circuits are separated and thermal exchange operates on one hand through the plate heat exchanger for user circuit, and on the other hand through the infill with the same evaporative operation than inside an open cooling tower.

Main benefits:

• Process water is not in direct contact with cooling tower water.
• Water quality control and no bacteria’s development risk.
• Easy and safe maintenance as limited by water quantity inside the cooling tower.
• Low water treatment cost, linked with strict water volume of the cooling tower.

Hybrid open or hybrid closed circuit cooling tower: 

A hybrid open or closed circuit is a cooling tower completed by a dry plume abatement coil. Settled at the top of the cooling tower, the plume coil allows reducing or even eliminate the plume. Plume at the outlet of a cooling tower could be wrongly associated to pollution, but it is only water vapour.

Hybrid cooling tower efficiency is ensured by a finned tube coil combined with a valve for adjusting the water spray on the exchange surface (infill) : JACIR patent.

Therefore, the combination of the air desaturation by air outlet warming up, and the reduction of the water spray on the packing, ensures the complete plume suppression. Beyond the plume suppression itself, this system can provide water savings up to 80 % and is an ultimate obstacle to the drifts

JACIR makes a point of ensuring the quality, the ease of use and operation of its cooling systems. For this, solutions exist, and must be optimized from the design stage.

• Maintenance access is facilitated, allowing sufficient access to act quickly and safely.
• Our equipment is designed to limit water and energy consumption, maintain performance over time, and allow regulation according to process demand, variations in external conditions and the working environment.
• Manufacturing quality is ensured in order to control maintenance expenses and allow our cooling towers to be programmed to prevent production hazards in the long term.