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How to Design a Cooling Tower

Chemical manufacturing, refineries and power plants all utilize indirect cooling methods in their processes. Evaporative cooling towers use forced air to remove the heat from a water stream. Heat transferred from the process to the water is pulled out and removed in a cooling tower. The design of an evaporative cooling tower takes into account the cooling load in the plant. Sizing a cooling tower requires knowledge of the process cooling requirements and the atmospheric conditions.

Things You'll Need

Pen
Paper
Calculator

Instructions

- 1
  Determine the maximum cooling water circulating pump flow rate in pounds per hour. For instance, the cooling water pumps could circulate water at 10,000 pounds per hour. This is the "WF" or water flow rate.
- 2
  Determine the plant process specific heat in BTU/pound, degree Fahrenheit. Specific heat is the amount of heat required to change a unit mass of a substance by one degree in temperature and is denoted by "SH". The chemical process design will dictate what the specific heat will be. For instance, assume a chemical plant has multiple processes that have an average specific heat of 150 BTU/lb deg F.
- 3
  Determine the maximum required temperature difference between the cooling water and the process. For instance, assume that the maximum temperature difference is 25 degrees Fahrenheit. This is denoted by "T.
- 4
  Determine the cooling load ("Q") that the cooling tower must provide by using the formula, Q = WF x SH x "T or 10,000 x 150 x 25 for a total required cooling load of 37.5 million BTU/hour.

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