Air Conditioner Cooling Tower

Air Conditioner Cooling Tower

There are two types of air-conditioning cooling systems used—a direct or open circuit tower, and an indirect or closed loop cooling tower. Direct towers are enclosed systems with internal ways of distributing the warm water to remove heat and release cold air. An indirect system involves no direct contact between the air and water that is being cooled and has 2 different fluid circuits. Many buildings are not conducive to installing air conditioner cooling towers because of the large ducting systems that are components of the system. Due to the large spaces these cooling towers are intended to work in, buildings must be designed to work with the duct systems and often one or more towers are required. If a building is not large enough to require an industrial cooling tower, other cooling methods are chosen.

HVAC (heating, ventilating and air conditioning) towers are the most common form of air conditioner cooling towers. These cooling tower systems use ventilation air ducts throughout the building to transport hot air to the cooling tower and then to supply conditioned air to every room through outlet vents. HVAC cooling towers use a chiller, stored in the tower, which removes heat from liquid and air by vapor compression. Chillers are composed of a compressor, evaporator, condenser and some sort of metering device. The chilled water is distributed to heat exchangers where it absorbs more heat energy. It is then recirculated back to the chiller system to repeat the process of evaporation and cooling. The air stream is dehumidified in this system. Many of these systems are used in climates that have extreme seasons, with high temperatures in the summer months requiring the use of air conditioning, but also freezing temperatures in winter months requiring the re-conditioning of interior air. In these cases, precautions are taken to prevent the systems from freezing, since many are continuously operating year-round. As cooling towers are typically large structures, or placed on top of large buildings, they are susceptible to damage from the elements and therefore have to be constructed in such a way as to withstand environmental changes and effects.