Introduce

Crossflow Cooling Towers Flow Diagram

In crossflow cooling tower systems the water vertically flows through the fill media while the air horizontally flows across the falling water. That’s why they call it “crossflow” because the air and water cross paths or flows. Because of the crossing of flows, the air doesn’t need to pass through the distribution system. This permits the use of hot water flow via gravity and distribution basins on the top of the tower right above the fill media. The basins are a standard of crossflow cooling towers and are applied on all units.

Closed type cooling towers operate in a manner similar to open cooling towers, except that the heat load to be rejected is transferred from the process fluid – the fluid being cooled – to the ambient air through a heat exchange copper coil. The coil serves to isolate the process fluid from the outside air, keeping it clean and contaminate free in a closed loop. This creates two separate fluid circuits: an external circuit, in which spray water circulates over the coil and mixes with the outside air, and an internal circuit, in which the process fluid circulates inside the coil. During operation, heat is transferred from the internal circuit, through the coil to the spray water, and then to the atmosphere as a portion of the water evaporates.

Counterflow Cooling Tower Diagram

Difference between crossflow and counterflow cooling towers: In counterflow cooling tower system processes, the air vertically flows upwards, counter to the water flow in the fill media. Due to the air flowing vertically, it’s not possible to use the basin’s gravity-flow like in crossflow towers. As a substitute, these towers use pressurized spray systems, usually pipe-type, to spray the water on top of the fill media. The pipes and cooling tower nozzles are usually spread farther apart so they will not restrict any air flow.

Gear/agitator Reduced Solutions – Gear boxes/agitator usually come in a variety of reduction ratios and designs in order to accommodate for the amount of horsepower and fan speeds of different types cooling towers. The manufacturer of your cooling tower usually lets customers order new gearboxes/agitator or have trained technicians that can repair or rebuild a faulty gearbox/agitator using original equipment manufactured parts.

Cooling Tower Fans – What are cooling tower fans used for? Cooling tower fans are used to force or push large amounts of air throughout the cooling tower. They must be built to withstand the corrosive effects in which the environment that they operate. These fans are usually loud but there are certain types of low-sound cooling tower fans. Cooling tower fans are used in crossflow, counterflow, induced/forced draft cooling towers. Natural draft cooling towers don’t need fans because they use the natural air flow and different processes that cool the water.  

Drive Shafts – What are cooling tower Cooling tower drive shafts used for? transmit power from the motor’s output shaft into the gear reducer’s input shaft. Drive shafts must also be corrosion resistant due to the harmful environment it which they operate.

Cooling Tower Fill Media – What is cooling tower fill media? Fill media is by far one of the most important cooling tower components. It could be considered the middle man of the entire process. Many of today’s cooling towers use efficient plastic film fills or fill media that maximize the surface area for evaporative cooling processes. Water gets distributed onto the fill, which spreads into thin film. This process increases the water-air interface and allows extra heat to evaporate at a fast pace. The major factors in choosing fill media are  Total Suspended Solids, intended treatment, water make-up and contamination potential. The 2 basic types of fill media are film type fill media (spreads the water out into a thin layer) and splash type fill media (breaks the water up). There is also fill media for specific types of towers such as crossflow fill media and counterflow fill media.