Cooling Water Systems and Cooling Towers

Blackhawk Equipment offers many types of cooling water systems for your exact industrial cooling water requirements. Blackhawk also helps design and install custom cooling towers. The most popular types of cooling water systems are dry fluid, closed evaporative and open evaporative cooling towers.

What exactly is a cooling tower? Cooling towers are a special kind of heat exchanger that allows air and water to blow past each other in order to lower the temperature of hot water used with industrial equipment for manufacturing. During the cooling process, small amounts of water evaporate and lower the water temperature of the liquid being circulated throughout the tower structure. Basically, the manufacturing equipment is heating water up as it is being used and a cooling tower gets it cold again so it can be recycled back into the same process again as a loop and valuable water is not wasted.

Federal regulations now require an annual two percent reduction of water use intensity for industrial applications, so it’s very important to install a cooling tower system that meets these and other local ordinances. A well-designed cooling tower and water treatment system can also remove depositing minerals, corrosive elements and control microbe growth, resulting in a more efficient system while saving thousands of dollars in operational costs each year.

Cooling towers come in many sizes depending on the exact needs and amount of heat that must be removed from the facility. From small units that fit on top of a building rooftop to standalone structures that are built to exact specs and environments. The exact cooling load required depends on how much heat must be removed and is often based on a location’s relative humidity in the air. Blackhawk Equipment has installed cooling tower systems for a variety of industries including petroleum, energy, food & beverage and various manufacturing facilities across Colorado, the United States and internationally.

Dry Fluid Cooling Towers

Dry fluid cooling towers operate by transferring heat through a heat exchanger that separates the working fluid from the ambient air. This transfers the heat by a heat exchanger with extended fins. The fan is driven by an electric motor. Dry cooling towers don’t consume any water as a result and are useful in a variety of applications. Details include:

Sealed and pressurized closed loop system
Uses ambient air across heat exchanger to dissipate heat
Sized to match specific heat load
Pre-assembled and wired for easy installation
Trim coolers for unexpected high ambient temperatures or to hold fluid temperatures to specifications available in tube-in shell or plate and frame

Closed Evaporative Cooling Towers

With closed circuit cooling towers, water is often mixed with glycol to form a fluid that is made to your needed specifications. This fluid mixture moves through a coil throughout the tower and is not directly exposed to air. Closed cooling towers are mostly used where the surface needs to be clean and free of contaminants, particles or other potential chemicals in the air. The key advantage is that there is no scale formation from the water condensation process and therefore makes for better efficiency and less downtime in maintenance. Details include:

Water/glycol mixture is circulated between heat load and evaporative cooler through a packaged pump/control module
Factory pre-piped and pre-wired for easy installation
Best utilized in high ambient locations with low humidity
Available with axial fans, centrifugal fans, fan cycling, dampers and pan heaters
Reduces high water and sewage costs

Open Evaporative & Custom Cooling Towers

Open evaporative cooling towers are often custom made to meet exact specifications and are very popular because of the overall cost-effectiveness and renewable nature of the process. Open evaporative cooling towers use water to cool a building or facility by recirculating the water returns to the cooling tower after gathering heat. It is then distributed across the tower where the water is in direct contact with the open air as it circulates across the cooling tower. The air flow is often regulated through centrifugal fans at the base or top of the tower as determined by the environmental conditions of the facility and needed cooling thresholds.

Cooling Tower packages with fan cycling for precise temperature control
Available with two speed fan motors, water storage tanks, pan heaters, and stainless steel and fiber housing
Custom pump packages and controls offered. See Custom Solutions – Water Packages

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