In other words, a cooling tower is a specialized heat exchanger in which air and water are brought into direct contact with each other in order to reduce the water's temperature . As this occurs, a small volume of water is evaporated, reducing the temperature of the water being circulated through the tower.
The use of cooling towers becomes essential where plenty of cooling water is not available from river or sea for direct cooling. A cooling tower can be considered as an enclosed device used for the evaporation cooling of water by contact with the air. In cooling towers, the cooling takes place partly by an exchange of latent heat resulting from the evaporation of some of the circulating water, and partly by the transfer of sensible heat. Although the cooling effect can be produced by cooling pond , spray pond, atmospheric tower , spray filled tower.
The types of cooling towers used in thermal power stations are :
( 1 ) Atmospheric ( Natural draught chimney ) type cooling tower . ( 2 )Mechanical draught type cooling towers.
The cooling towers can also be classified as wet cooling towers or dry cooling towers.
Wet cooling tower -: In wet cooling towers the cooling takes place by evaporation but huge quantity of water goes along with hot air into atmosphere.
Dry cooling tower -: In this type of cooling towers, the cooling takes place by surface heat exchange, there being no drift losses ; of course, the initial cost is very high.