Condenser Water Pump Being Deadheaded by the Lift on a Cooling Tower
is exciting video demonstrates how a pump serving an open system needs to generate the head required to lift the water through the air gap. You'll laugh, you'll cry, it will change your life.
In this case, the open system is a cooling tower and the air gap is the distance between the water level in the cold basin and the water level in the hot basin. The video starts with the pump running at nearly full speed with good flow distribution over all of the hot basins. As we slow the pump down, you will see the basin water levels drop off and will see how the weirs in the hot basins concentrate the flow towards the center of the fill in an effort to keep all of the fill active and wet as the flow drops off.
Operating a tower with only a portion of the fill wet is not efficient and can also ruin the fill, as discussed in this blog post. In my experience, this problem is not uncommon. You will find several other videos that illustrate it on our Cooling Tower Flow Variation page. The video titled The Tower includes content that explains some of the phenomenon you observe in addition to documenting the flow variation and being generally quite exciting and dramatic.
In this case, the open system is a cooling tower and the air gap is the distance between the water level in the cold basin and the water level in the hot basin. The video starts with the pump running at nearly full speed with good flow distribution over all of the hot basins. As we slow the pump down, you will see the basin water levels drop off and will see how the weirs in the hot basins concentrate the flow towards the center of the fill in an effort to keep all of the fill active and wet as the flow drops off.
Operating a tower with only a portion of the fill wet is not efficient and can also ruin the fill, as discussed in this blog post. In my experience, this problem is not uncommon. You will find several other videos that illustrate it on our Cooling Tower Flow Variation page. The video titled The Tower includes content that explains some of the phenomenon you observe in addition to documenting the flow variation and being generally quite exciting and dramatic.
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The PowerPoint file are a set of slides I use to discuss and illustrate open vs. closed systems which complement the video.
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