Cooling Tower Drift Emission

[Subhajit Pal]

Dear All,

Greetings of the Day !

In recent years there is a large boom in cooling tower industry due to construction of various types of industrial growth throughout India. Industries like Refineries, Power plants and many other manufacturing companies.

The main function of cooling tower is to cool the process water. However it also create impacts to the environment in form of Drift emission. Though the problem can be only realised mainly in large industries which uses huge amount of sea water for their process, which are mainly situated in coastal areas.

This is mainly due to non address of these problem in EIA reports. It is also because of lack awareness due to non existing of these problems which came to highlight in recent years.

It is no ones fault, however we need to find out the solution to mitigate these issues.

Cooling Tower Drift: The hot water which evaporated and form tiny droplet and some time in form of mist carried  in air due to wind velocity. The drift may be more or may be very minute depends on wind velocity and on the particular climate season. Sometimes these impacts are reversible in particular season like in rainy season.

Impacts:

• Rusting of structures, buildings.
• More maintenance work required such as painting resulting in generation of hazardous waste.
• Impact on vegetation (trees, shrubs, herbs, greenbelt & landscape).
• Changes in land use pattern only in long term,  if preventive actions not taken.

 Measures:

• Creation of barrier in between cooling tower, however it may affects the performance of cooling tower.
• Using of high efficiency drift eliminators, if considered during the design phase. Can be consulted with the manufacturer.
• Changes in cooling tower design as per USEPA GUIDELINES.

These are some of common measures which we can do. However I would like to have some innovative ideas which can be cost effective and efficient in addressing the above impacts.

I request you all to have a look and let us discuss.

Regards,

Subhajit Pal

[Vinit Mishra]

Hello!!! Solutions already available to tackle the problem, but yes incorporation in the EIA needs to be done, may be in near future. Please have a look at the site below:
http://www.towercomponentsinc.com/operation-drift-eliminator.php

Thanx
Vinit

[Subhajit Pal]

Mishra Ji !

Thank you for sharing the link.

I have one more quiry what happens if high efficiency drift eliminators fails. Is there any alternative way available ?

Atmospheric water generators can these be used to catch the drift ?

Regards,
Subhajit Pal

[Rajesh Kumar Garg]

Subhajitji, I don't think AWG would be a good choice for a power starved country like ours (India) & further where monetary value of water doesn't pinch our pockets.

[Sangeeta Mukherjee]

Very informative. I as an environment professional shall try to address it in EIA studies.