Importance of Cooling Tower Maintenance

Cooling Tower Australia

Australia relies heavily on fossil fuel and renewable resources such as solar, water, wind and biomass for power or electricity. This country is the largest exporter of uranium in the world. Based on a report last December 2011, the country’s share were about 31 percent or 1,661,000 tonnes. Nuclear power is a product of processed uranium. Despite the enormous reserve the country has, they never used nuclear power as a source of energy or electricity. Thus, seeing cooling tower in Australia is nothing new. Thermoelectric power plants usually have one or more cooling towers as seen on the figure below.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia.org

They quite resemble small volcanoes spewing something destructive, right? Never fear because the white gas is only water vapor. What is cooling tower and what role it plays on power plants? According to Ask.com, “A cooling tower is a heat exchanger or ejection system inside of which heat is withdrawn from the water by contact between the water and air and to eliminate heat from a production or manufacturing process.” The elimination of heat is by means of evaporation.

Inside power plants are sophisticated machines that produce electricity and distribute it to consumers continuously. The common problem a machine encounters due to a non-stop use is overheating. This will be a major catastrophe if the source of energy is nuclear power. A presence of a cooling tower in the area lessens this, not completely though, and one of the preemptive measures is the maintenance of this huge structure. Conversely, we are aware of the adverse affects of nuclear power once handled irresponsibly.

Like other types of heat exchangers, maintenance is the key for a longer life. A longer shelf life means savings in money, energy and time. Let us use a refrigerator as a simpler example. Yes, this typical electrical appliance has a heat exchanger. Similar to a power plant, it can’t be unplugged because frozen goods are at stake.

Yet, there are times it must be turned off when under maintenance or cleaning. A scheduled cleaning is quite important because neglecting such task could affect its efficiency and the worst case is buying a new one. What more if a cooling tower maintenance is rarely practiced in a facility as huge as a power plant? Not just one household but an entire community or a nation will be jeopardized.

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For more information about heat exchangers and cooling towers, please visit www.heatexchangers.com.au.

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Cooling Tower in Australia

Heat Exchanger Applications

Cooling Towers in Australia

Photo from Heat Exchangers WA

Heat transfer from one medium to another is done with a machine called heat exchanger. The medium can be split up by compartments to avoid mixing or to avoid direct contact. A classic example of this is available at the products and services of Heat Exchangers WA. Many people didn’t know about heat exchangers. Here are the examples of machines and equipment that utilize the use of heat exchangers.

Car Radiators

Car Radiators

When something wrong happens to your car engine like overheating, it is probably caused by radiator failure. Car radiators are the most common use of heat exchangers or actually, radiator is a type of heat exchanger. Heat exchangers don’t just manipulate the flow of heat, but also manipulate and act as coolant. We can find it inside an internal combustion engine where it acts as heat moderator and coolant.

Refrigerators

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

As mentioned above, heat exchangers also acts as a coolant and refrigerators are the best example to best back it up. Basically, different types of heat exchangers are used in refrigeration namely plate heat exchangers, tubular heat exchangers and coaxial coil heat exchangers. Each one of them plays different roles but is weighted equally.

Air Conditioner/Heater

Photo Credit: Wikimedia

Another example of machine or equipment that has heat exchanger is your air conditioner or heater at home. Actually, every machine and equipment that produces hotness or coolness has a heat exchanger. They manipulate the flow of heat through fluids. I have read a life hack that combine aluminum fins, copper pipe, and box fan, and with that, it created a homemade air conditioner. How does it happen? Well, not just they have built a homemade air conditioner but using aluminum fins and copper, they had also built an improvised heat exchanger.

Those that I’ve said are the basic examples of the applications of heat exchangers. The major application of it is in the energy industry where cooling towers plays a huge role. Chemical plants, petrochemical plants, and power plants are the foremost portion in the energy industry that is run mostly by heat exchangers. For more information, please visit www.heatexchangers.com.au.

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Cooling Towers in Australia