When people typically think of cooling tower systems, they think about those water cooling towers that nuclear power plants have. However, that’s only type of cooling tower. Here are a few things you might find interesting.

Water Cooling Towers Vary in Size.

As you could probably infer already, water cooling towers vary in size. They can be as small as a rooftop unit, to a massive hyperboloid structure of over 600 feet tall, and 330 feet in diameter. There are even rectangular cooling tower systems that can be more than 130 feet tall, and 260 feet long. These various sizes were designed for a multitude of different industries, and can meet a number of needs.

They Can Be Very Small.

Now, when it’s said that water cooling towers can be small, that means they can be pretty small. The smallest systems are designed to handle water streams of just a few gallons of water a minute, supplied in small pipes that are not unlike those that you may actually seen in a residential structure. In other words, there are systems so small they could work in your home.

They Can Be Staggeringly Massive.

At the same time, cooling towers can also be unbelievably monolithic. Petroleum refineries, for example, have massive cooling towers. The average cooling tower used by a refinery processes about 40,000 metric tons of crude oil each day. That’s about 300,000 barrels, or about 40,000 cubic meters per day, that circulates about 80,000 cubic meters of water per hour through the system. The biggest, tallest cooling tower in the world is 663 feet tall, and stands at the Kalisindh Thermal Power Station in Jhalawar, Rajasthan, India. That’s a shockingly huge cooling tower!

If you have any questions about water cooling towers, feel free to share in the comments.