Mixing systems for wet and dry plumes and cleaning equipment for the heat exchangers of the dry section. Two indispensible components of an effective and safe hybrid cooling tower

At first glance, the hybrid cooling tower seems to be an ingenious combination of the well known components of an evaporative cooling tower and a dry cooling tower. The calculation of the air mass flows for both the wet and dry sections required to achieve an invisible plume does not represent an unsolvable problem to the engineer experienced in thermodynamics. The same also applies to the dimensioning of the heat exchangers and cooling fills. The hybrid cooling tower requires a well designed mixing system in order to ideally mix, the dry plume into the wet plume. If the cooling tower proves its efficiency during commissioning it is important that the ratio of the performance of the wet section to that of the dry section be maintained also in the long term. The performance of the fill in a wet cooling tower is consistently stable. Dirt deposits can form very quickly on the inner and outer surfaces of the heat exchangers of the dry section. In this case the thermal resistance increases rapidly. The respective performance of the wet and dry sections is then no longer balanced and the invisibility of the plume is no longer assured. This can be avoided by providing appropriate cleaning equipment