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Water consumption on cooling tower

Water consumption on cooling tower

Water consumption on cooling tower

(OP)
All:
I´m trying to calculate the estimated make-up water volume in a cooling tower, for the purpose of establishing its water treatment costs, but I´m struggling to come up with a solution to this problem. I thought about trying to obtain the volume of air that passes through the tower, see it´s initial characteristics (of temperature and RH) and then assume that this air comes out saturated and see the water quantity difference in a psychometric chart, but the reality is that I don´t know the air leaving temperature and I am not sure how accurate is this method.

Does anybody has any idea on how to nail this?

Thanks in advance for your help

RE: Water consumption on cooling tower

The worst case is that all the heat load is handled by evaporation. On high humidity days there will be less evaporation. Blow-down to remove the build-up of dissolved solids will add to your water requirement.

RE: Water consumption on cooling tower

Do you have an energy model for the building/systems served? If you do it should have annual ton-hours cooling. That will give you the annual gallons evaporated, to which you need to add drift and blowdown losses.

If it's an existing building/system, you will have to develop seasonal data or assume some kind of load profile.

RE: Water consumption on cooling tower

I am almost certain you could have found this in Perry's Handbook.

But anyway here is a link to a simplified method:


Cooling Tower Make-up


RE: Water consumption on cooling tower

That link passes through the Twilight Zone.

RE: Water consumption on cooling tower

That will give the peak water consumption. For most facilities, the cooling load is highly seasonal, so some kind of load profile over the year is needed to have a meaningful water treatment cost.

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