What are the alternatives to cooling towers

and evaporative condensers?

There are options available to cooling towers and evaporative
condensers which may be used subject to the thermal requirements of
the process and the desired re-cooled water temperature.

Dry Air Blast Coolers & Air Cooled Condensers

These utilise dry air drawn across a finned coil matrix to reject process
heat to atmosphere. They are not as thermally efficient as cooling towers
and are not able to cool water to temperatures as low as a cooling tower
as they use dry ambient air as the cooling medium.

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•Examples of dry air blast coolers

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Dry / Wet Systems
(also known as Adiabatic or Hybrid)
• These operate as dry coolers for the majority of the time with the
added facility to incorporate wet / adiabatic cooling as and when
ambient and load temperatures require. They achieve lower water
temperatures than dry coolers but not always as low as a cooling
tower can achieve.
• These units are available in several different configurations. When
operating in wet mode, water may be sprayed into the incoming
airstream, sprayed on to the coil, deluged over the coil, sprayed into
a mesh screen in front of the coil or trickled over a pre-cooler pad.
• All of these design principles must be carefully evaluated in the
legionella risk assessment and the system operated with suitable
control measures in place when running in wet mode.

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Dry/wet coolers

(a) Cooler with sprays (b) Cooler with spray (c) Cooler with trickle
onto mesh onto media

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Dry/wet coolers – spray type

away from coil towards coil

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Dry/wet coolers

evaporative pre
cooler media

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Control measures are required to ensure the
wet / adiabatic cooling is not detrimental to the
coil!
Examples of dry/wet coolers

WMSoc in conjunction with HSE are preparing

an additional guidance document on the
control of Legionella in dry/wet systems.

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Adiabatic control boxes
can provide some of the
necessary control
measures as shown with
UV module, filtration,
check valves, double reg
valves and purge
sequencing