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Hybrid cooling tower technology, between wet and dry cooling

Hybrid cooling tower technology, between wet and dry cooling Cooling towers of the Makban geothermal plant, Philippines (source: ThinkGeoEnergy, creative commons)
Alexander Richter 26 Oct 2015

A new hybrid cooling tower developed by the University of Queensland Geothermal Center of Excellence, could provide a efficient solution combining advantages of wet and dry cooling towers for geothermal power plants.

An interesting article from Australia describes research by a team from The University of Queensland’s Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence (QGECE) that has developed a hybrid cooling tower technology.

The main idea was to reduce water consumption in thermal power generation, while at the same time providing some modularity for speeder construction.

In thermal power generation, cooling towers are dispose of waste heat for plants to operate more efficiently.

There are generally wet and dry cooling towers. “Wet cooling towers”, so Engineers Australia, “evaporate water into the air flowing through the tower. Dry cooling towers transfer heat from the power plant directly into the air.

The article describes both technologies in more detail talking about the amount of water being used in wet cooling towers and challenges in using dry cooling towers.

It then describes the hybrid tower as a solution for intermittent high temperature efficiencies with some flexibility in design for dry, wet or hybrid modes depending on the environment and availability of water supplies.

Numerical modelling indicates that a power plant using this system can increase net power output during periods of high ambient temperature by up to 20%. The hybrid system also allows the tower to be smaller, and operate in a larger range of ambient temperatures.

For further details see article linked below.

Source: Engineers Australia