Power Generation
Cooling towers are essential to the operation of thermal power plants and their performance is critical to the steam turbine efficiency. However, they consume large volumes of water that are rejected in the form of plumes. In fact, power generation is the second largest water user after agriculture. Infinite Cooling technologies allow power plants to reduce their water usage while increasing their uptime and efficiency.
POWER PLANT MANAGER, EASTERN USA
“We would not have identified all these improvement opportunities without TowerPulse™"
Power generation efficiency
Steam turbine efficiency is directly linked to the backpressure in the steam condenser, which in turn is set by the cooling tower efficiency. A myriad of maintenance issues or inefficient settings can decrease cooling efficiency and reduce the amount of power generated. Infinite Cooling can monitor towers, diagnose inefficiencies, and enhance performance with actionable recommendations.
1-2%+
POWER
PRODUCTION
Water consumption
Cooling towers are responsible for the vast majority of water consumption at power plants through evaporation and wastewater blowdown. Makeup water needs to be procured to replace losses, and wastewater needs to be disposed of in a safe way. Infinite Cooling reduces the need for makeup water by capturing the stream of water droplets in cooling tower condensation plumes. The captured water is pure and can reduce blowdown if re-used in the tower or can be used as feed for a demineralized water system.
Majority
PURE WATER RECAPTURED IN PLUME
Plume issues
As water vapor leaves cooling towers, a fraction condenses into small droplets that form visible plumes. These plumes can cause a number of issues: some air permits do not allow the release of a plume, plumes can freeze on a switchyard or gas turbine inlet and cause a plant outage, plumes can cause safety hazards due to low visibility, or they can be re-entrained into cooling towers and decrease efficiency.
Infinite Cooling solves all of these concerns by abating the plume in a simple and cost-effective way to ensure uninterrupted operation.
PLUME ABATEMENT
