Environmental Impacts of Cooling Tower Operations - The Influence of Regional Conditions on Energy and Water Demands

摘要

A sustainable development towards future production systems requires a holistic understanding of the overall production system. As supplier of cooling medium for processes, machines and air-conditioning, cooling towers play a key role for various production processes and the overall factory. Due to long operating time, significant energy and water demands as well as related environmental impacts, the improvement of cooling tower operations has come into focus of industry. Beyond this background, this paper presents an approach for analysing the energy and water demand as well as the global warming potential of forced-draft cooling towers for industrial purposes. As the energy and. water demand of cooling towers is highly influenced by regional conditions, different locations all over the world have been considered in the analysis regarding regional climatic data as well as country-specific electrical energy mixes.