A hyperboloid cooling tower has been an almost iconic building on our premises for many years. In September last year, we decided to remove it and build a fan cooling tower. The new technology, which will be launched in May 2022, will help us improve water and cold management.
Change after 60 years
The natural-draft cooling tower has served for six decades. This structure with a height of 35 meters was built between 1960 and 1961 according to the project by Armabeton Praha n. p. – a company specialized in industrial construction.
A renovation that took place in 1984 and 2000 included repairs to the outer and inner shell and a complete replacement of the core with the possibility of its power overload by 20%.
Since 2010, the tower has been part of the cooling circuit for cogeneration units and absorption cooling. However, its parameters were no longer sufficient. Even if it was extensively renovated, we would not be able to cool the water to the optimum value in the summer months. This would reduce the performance of both cogeneration units and absorption cooling during the hottest days.
The investment costs for the construction of the new tower were comparable to the reconstruction costs of the old one. Therefore, in September 2020, the Board of Directors of Chemosvit Energochem, a.s. has decided to build a fan cooling tower.
Differences in favour of new technology
For a better understanding, here is a short theory: cooling towers work as an exchanger (water–air), which also uses a change of state (water–steam) for efficient cooling. That allows the water to cool below the ambient air temperature. The absolute cooling limit is the so-called wet-bulb temperature (100% water saturation of air at a given temperature).
The cooling towers, depending on their dimensioning and design, move closer to this value. From this point of view, fan towers where the airflow is regulated are preferred. They are independent of atmospheric conditions and can be as close as possible to the wet-bulb temperature.
For hyperboloid cooling towers, approaching the wet-bulb temperature is worse if they are lower than 100 m. The regulation of the tower power itself is also very problematic.
Parameters for greater efficiency
The new cooling tower has a power output of 5 MW. With an ambient temperature of 33°C and relative humidity of 40%, it can cool the cooling water with an inlet temperature of 32.5°C to an outlet temperature of 25°C, which is the limit temperature for our technologies.
Thanks to the low cooling water outlet temperature, we can ensure qualitative and quantitative water parameters for our trigeneration technology even in summer. We should thus eliminate the reduction in its performance due to overheating. The services we provide to our partners will remain at the highest level.