Wastewater treatment methods for cooling towers

Installing a water collector above the spray layer of the cooling tower to capture water droplets should yield better results

Is the performance of the collector not good?

It has to be elegant; it’s inevitable. Choose a better type of collector

I think the design of the cooling tower is crucial; if the water distribution device is not well designed, water splashing will be a serious problem. The design of wind speed is also one of the factors at play. The water collector can only slow down the splashing phenomenon.

While the quality of design is indeed important, water splashing is inevitable; however, by placing collectors in a proper manner, more than 80% of the water splashing can be reduced.

Qualified cooling tower designs all include water collectors, but they cannot completely eliminate water loss; therefore, water loss is an inherent aspect of system design. It is precisely because this is inevitable that **the Code for General Layout Design of Industrial Enterprises GB50187-93 specifically emphasizes that cooling towers should not be located on the upwind side of outdoor power distribution installations, as well as railways and roads, with regard to the prevailing wind directions in winter. ”It also specifies the minimum horizontal distance between the cooling tower and adjacent facilities.

1. Water collector: An efficient and low-resistance reinforced arc-shaped water collector utilizing patented technology; the collector panels are made by extrusion using modified PVC material, with a thickness of 0.8 mm ± 0.1, and a panel spacing of 40 mm. The water loss rate based on the circulating water volume should be below 0.001% (and the manufacturer is required to provide a test report from the Beijing Water Science Institute). 2. Air ducts: Kinetic energy recovery-type air ducts made of fiberglass are used, with the inner surface of these ducts having an elliptical shape; the kinetic energy recovery efficiency of such ducts must be at least 30%. This helps to reduce the power required by the fan, thereby minimizing the amount of water droplets carried along with the air.

Generally speaking, open-loop cooling water systems allow for a certain amount of water loss due to evaporation; eliminating this phenomenon completely would result in significantly higher costs. In the north, evaporation is sometimes utilized to thaw ventilation windows. Currently, most facilities simply control the water runoff rate, with the common method being the installation of water collectors

Firstly, from a design perspective, the excess margin in the fan design results in excessively high wind speeds in the water collection section, which forces small water droplets to be drawn out of the cooling tower； Secondly, when selecting drift eliminators, it is necessary to choose those with high efficiency in eliminating drift. In this regard, the drift eliminators produced by the American company Marley can serve as a reference. The 8.2 Drift eliminators should also be made of PVC with a thickness of 17 mil or more; they should be of the cellular type and operate on a triple-pass principle, ensuring that drift losses are limited to no more than 0.010% of the designed GPM flow rate. These eliminators should be assembled in the factory into units that are easy to handle, and these units should be arranged so as to form a continuous layer of drift eliminators across the entire area of each tower cell. The eliminators should be supported by framing girts at intervals of no more than 6’0”, and they should be able to withstand a snow load of 25 psf.