Clean Water Production in Cooling Towers

Technical Report · Tue Sep 30 00:00:00 EDT 2025

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/3008428· OSTI ID:3008428

This project developed and demonstrated a novel technology that produces clean water from cooling tower recirculating water by using the natural evaporation and condensation cycle inside cooling towers. The system captures the escaping plume and converts blowdown quality water into high purity water suitable for on-site reuse such as boiler feed. The technology uses electric fields to ionize exhaust plumes, charge the entrained droplets, and direct them toward collection electrodes where they coalesce and flow downward. This allows water recovery at a low energy cost while reducing visible plume emissions. In addition, we developed a complementary software platform that improves overall cooling tower performance. The system uses wireless sensors and physics-based machine learning algorithms to optimize key parameters of the cooling process. For power generation facilities, this increases the thermal efficiency of the cooling loop and condenser, resulting in measurable cycle efficiency gains. Improvements of one percent or more can deliver significant increases in electricity production for the same fuel input.

• Research Organization: Infinite Cooling, Malden, MA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• DOE Contract Number: FE0032057
• OSTI ID: 3008428
• Report Number(s): DOE-NETL-InfiniteCooling--093025
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT
03 NATURAL GAS
15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
42 ENGINEERING
99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS
Clean water production
Cooling system efficiency
Cooling tower plumes
Cooling towers
Data centers
Plume Abatement
Power Plants