What is "cooling tower"

n. A large device, in the form of a tower-shaped building, in which warm water is cooled by evaporation caused by circulating currents of air

n. a cooling system used in industry to cool hot water (by partial evaporation) before reusing it as a coolant

A cooling tower is a heat rejection device which rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a water stream to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove process heat and cool the working fluid to near the wet-bulb air temperature or, in the case of closed circuit dry cooling towers, rely solely on air to cool the working fluid to near the dry-bulb air temperature.

Common applications include cooling the circulating water used in oil refineries, petrochemical and other chemical plants, thermal power stations and HVAC systems for cooling buildings. The classification is based on the type of air induction into the tower: the main types of cooling towers are natural draft and induced draft cooling towers.

Cooling towers vary in size from small roof-top units to very large hyperboloid structures (as in the adjacent image) that can be up to tall and in diameter, or rectangular structures that can be over tall and long. The hyperboloid cooling towers are often associated with nuclear power plants, although they are also used in some coal-fired plants and to some extent in some large chemical and other industrial plants. Although these large towers are very prominent, the vast majority of cooling towers are much smaller, including many units installed on or near buildings to discharge heat from air conditioning.