Shell

Root Cause Analysis applied to a Cooling Water Tower Failure

20 October, 2003
1

Texas A&M Case Study

Typical Cooling Water Tower

As-built

Air Hot-water distribution pipe Hot-water distribution deck

30

Fan
42

Air

48

Cold-water Basin

Cooling Water Tower Introduction

Who needs a cooling water tower? The chemical and refining industry use many cooling water towers. You may also encounter cooling water towers in power industry as well as some public buildings. While each one is unique, they share many of the properties well discuss today. Why use a cooling water tower? The cooling water tower is used to turn warm water into cool water. That cool water is pumped throughout the refinery/chemical plant and used to cool hot streams. The water will become warm (sometimes hot). One could discharge the warm water into a lake or river (it is clean water that was not contaminated by process chemicals), but that would be expensive (it costs money to make the water clean in the first place). Instead, we take the warm water and cool it in a cooling water tower. Then, we re-use the water. How does it work? Warm water is delivered to the tower by distribution pipes. In the previous schematic, two pipes are shown in light green. The warm water is splashed down through the tower like a hard rain storm. Air flows through the tower and cools the water droplets. The cool water droplets collect at the bottom in the cold-water basin. From the cold-water basin, water is pumped back to the refinery/chemical plant to cool process streams. To get a good air flow through the tower, there are big fans on top that pull air through the sides of the tower. These fans can be stopped or started to allow just the right temperature in the water. A computer is often used to start or stop the fans and control the water temperature (the program can be sophisticated enough that each fan is run the same amount of time so that no one fan wears out prematurely).

Vent pipe Hot-water Deck

Fan Cylinder

Fan Hot-water Distribution Pipe

Drift Eliminator
Louvers on Outside walls

Column Diagonal Brace Plenum Cold-water basin

Wetted Area containing splash bars

Girt Splice block

Cooling Water Tower Features

The cooling water tower is typically made of wood (sometimes plastic or metal). From top to bottom, the tower may exceed 60 feet tall. The tower may be 60 feed wide and as much as 500 feet long. The structure is braced to withstand wind (typically designed to withstand hurricane-force winds). The water pipe, water, and wet wood weigh quite a lot (equivalent of two Suburbans stacked on some columns there may be 1000 columns each 50 feet tall!), so theres a lot of material in the tower to make it strong. The original water distribution pipes were made of wood! They actually looked like a very long wooden barrel with metal bands that held the wood together. Later, the wooden pipe was replaced with a plastic one. A vent pipe on the hot-water distribution pipe allows air bubbles to exit the pipe. Hot water from the process flows to the distribution pipe. Water from the hot-water distribution pipe flows on to the hotwater deck. Holes in the hot-water deck allow water to fall (like rain) through the wetted area. Splash bars in the wetted area slow the flow of water so it has time to cool before collecting in the cold-water basin. Air is pulled through the sides to cool the water. A drift eliminator separates the wetted area from the plenum. This drift eliminator coalesces water and reduces the amount of water lost by unwanted spray. The weight of the tower is held by columns. Since there are no boards long-enough to make 50 foot long columns, 18 boards are joined with splice blocks to make a column. Girts (horizontal boards) and diagonal braces keep the columns straight up and down which maximizes the load-carrying capacity. Louvers on the outside of the tower re-direct splashing water into the basin.

Whats technically possible .