Technological advancements set to boost cooling tower business

“Several water-intensive cooling technologies are still in use and fossil fuel-based power has a higher direct water footprint than renewable power.”
Preyesh Chandrashekar, Business Development Director, National Cooling Towers

Rreyesh Chandrashekar, Business Development Director, National Cooling Towers (NCT), talks about the new technologies in the cooling tower sector and the various factors driving the market growth. He also discusses the challenges in the sector and what NCT is doing for the same.

How do you view the market for cooling towers, especially with regards to the power sector?
Cooling towers are relatively inexpensive and are considered as a reliable means of removing low-grade heat. The cooling tower market is spread across a wide range of end-use industries, including nuclear and thermal power plants, petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, food processing plants, and HVACR. Therefore, the market is set to grow as per the growth in other related industries in the coming years. India’s power generation has been increasing at an impressive rate over the last few decades. This is likely to continue in the coming years. India’s climate policy and low-carbon policy ambition are also drivers for power supply planning in the country.

We developed a reference scenario to account for the effects of the proposed power sector targets and water regulations on the future water demand. This study found that water withdrawals by the power sector would grow at around 3.8 percent — nearly five times the levels in 2010 — to about 276 billion cubic meters (BCM) by 2050. Currently, water standards have been specified only for coal thermal power plants (TPPs). Without any additional water standards or regulations, water consumption will increase to nearly seven times of 2010 levels, which is around 14 BCM by 2050.

Coal power plants will account for the largest share of water withdrawals and consumption, despite having switched over to recirculating (water-efficient) cooling tower technologies. This is because despite overachieving high renewable energy installed capacity, coal-based generation is projected to dominate the power sector unless future policies target deep decarbonisation strategies in power generation.

What are the challenges faced by cooling tower companies?
The major challenge that companies need to overcome is the necessity for water — a scarce resource in India. However, water consumption and dependence of the power sector on water resources are causes for growing concern. Several water-intensive cooling technologies are still in use and fossil fuel-based power has a higher direct water footprint than renewable power. Studies in the past suggested that the power sector accounts for a majority of industrial water consumption.
R&D at National Cooling Towers is an endless process of improvement. Every day we push our boundaries of engineering and manufacturing technology, doing trials and errors for overcoming this challenge and applying it to our wide range of products.

How can you reduce water usage in cooling towers to ensure sustainability and efficiency?
A dry cooling tower operates like an automobile radiator. There is no direct contact with air and thus there is no loss of water from DCTs. Hence, there is an increasing interest in dry cooling towers, also known as Closed Loop Cooling Towers, in areas where water scarcity prevents plants from using a traditional water-cooled condenser in a steam power plant but with only low-temperature difference depending on the ambient weather conditions. We have manufactured and commissioned such Closed Loop Cooling Towers also known as Air Blast Coolers.