Air-Water Contact Surface Area

Definition

The large engineered surface where air and water meet in a cooling tower, created by stacked angular plastic fill sheets that maximize gas-liquid contact.

In the author’s tower roughly 60,000 square feet of wetted surface, about the size of a football field, was packed into the fill to maximize air-water exchange. This same surface that makes evaporative cooling efficient also accelerates CO2 stripping and provides the area on which calcium carbonate scale deposits. When the acid feed failed, nearly every square inch became coated with scale.

Related concepts

Evaporative Condenser · CO2 Stripping in Cooling Towers · Calcium Carbonate Scaling

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Part of The Blueprint of Water · 🛠️ operations