Plume abatement and water conservation with the wet/dry cooling tower
- Marley Cooling Tower Co., Mission, KS (United States)
Wet/dry towers, sometimes referred to in Europe as hybrid cooling towers, evolved beginning about 1970 due to concerns regarding the environment. The United States Environmental Protection Agency classified the visible discharge plume from evaporative or wet cooling towers as visual pollution. Tower designs evolved which incorporated readily available air-cooled or dry heat exchangers to introduce a non-evaporative air heating process. The combination of evaporative and non-evaporative heating results in reduction of the relative humidity of the air leaving these wet/dry cooling towers. For a period of time, environmental impact statement requirements required review of the plume abatement option on most large industrial and power sites. A result was construction of some large industrial and power plant sized wet/dry cooling towers for plume abatement. Higher capital cost and operating power consumption than that of wet towers was typical of this generation of wet/dry towers. The higher off-design cold water temperatures of wet-dry towers resulted in higher heat rates and fuel costs for power plants. By the end of the decade, economic influences led to diminished pressure from the EPA. For these reasons, the number of wet/dry towers studied and purchased subsided drastically during the late 1970`s.
- Research Organization:
- Electric Power Research Inst., Palo Alto, CA (United States); Yankee Scientific, Inc., Medfield, MA (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 48147
- Report Number(s):
- EPRI-TR--104867; CONF-9408224--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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