Industrial Cooling Towers

Elevated water temperatures can kill fish and other aquatic organisms. A cooling tower serves to dissipate the heat into the atmosphere instead and wind. air diffusion spreads the heat over a much larger area than hot water can distribute heat in a body of water. The primary use of large, industrial cooling towers is to remove the heat absorbed in the circulating cooling water systems used in power plants, petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, natural gas processing plants, food processing plants, semi-conductor plants, and for other industrial facilities such as in condensers of distillation columns, for cooling liquid in crystallization, etc. Some coal-fired and nuclear power plants located in coastal areas do make use of once-through ocean water. But even there, the offshore discharge water outlet requires very careful design to avoid environmental problems.