Components of Cooling Towers

Specimen Location Suction side component of cooling tower pump... 

The components of a tower that distribute hot water uniformly through the cooling tower, to the point where it meets the airflow. Includes headers, laterals, nozzles (esp. in counterflow designs), troughs, and flow controllers. 

A cooling tower is a simple device used by industry to remove heat from water. Hot water transfers heat to cooler air as it passes through the internal components of the tower. This type of heat is called sensible heat sensible heat can be measured or felt. Sensible heat accounts for only 10%... 

Special emphasis should be given to potential interaction effects between UHS components (such as failure of cooling towers and flooding from the UHS basin) and other safety related structures. 

In such a plant the gas stream passes through a series of fractionating columns in which liquids are heated at the bottom and partly vaporised, and gases are cooled and condensed at the top of the column. Gas flows up the column and liquid flows down through the column, coming into close contact at trays in the column. Lighter components are stripped to the top and heavier products stripped to the bottom of the tower. 

This analysis underscores the importance of examining failed components before they are cleaned or in any way altered. It also demonstrates the potential complexity of failure analysis and the need that exists to discard explanations that do not adequately account for all relevant observations. Important also to note is the potential connectedness of environmental factors, such that the seasonal development of seed hairs in a field of grass near a cooling tower would eventually contribute to perforations of tubes in a condenser. 

Figure 12.13 illustrates severe damage suffered by a component of a cooling tower water pump. The jagged, undercut, spongelike metal loss characteristic of cavitation damage is apparent in Fig. 12.14. All damage occurred along the inner curvature of the specimen.

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