A cooling tower is defined as a structure that extracts
waste heat from a process and distributes it into the
atmosphere. The most common method is to let the
heated water fall through a moving air stream created by
a fan at the top of the tower. A small amount of water
evaporates, taking a large amount of heat from the process.
An open-circuit cooling tower distributes heated
water over a labyrinth-like packing or “fill.” The water is
cooled as it descends through the fill. The cooled water is
then collected in a cold water basin below the fill where
it is pumped back through the process to absorb more
heat [1]. Many towers are made up of multiple cells,
with each cell having its own fan. A typical tower
arrangement with two cells is shown in Figure 1.