I spent a winter/spring rebuilding a cooling tower in a coal power plant in Illinois. Evidently the plant intentionally waited for part of it to collapse so they could file an insurance claim... The super boiling water that ran through it definitely was not pure H20. Chemicals were added to it (to keep it from evaporating?)
The cooling tower doesn't circulate the pure water. Pure water is the dark blue loop in the graphic at 5:24. The cooling tower has the light blue loop and there you have barely purified water, drawn from a river, to which you need to add chemicals to prevent massive growth of biolfilms in the cozy warm cooling water loop. Yes that will not be clean and leave lots of fouling over time.
Hydropower, the force of naturally occurring water movement to rotate a turbine is more efficient, but we used most of the sources already. Wave power has potential, but a lot of drawbacks.
You can! And you should do that. But not the full thermal load, as district heating needs temperatures that are too high to operate the condenser efficiently. Can't run the power plant when the condenser has to work at 90 degC or so. You still need a cooling loop with cooling water.
I spent a winter/spring rebuilding a cooling tower in a coal power plant in Illinois. Evidently the plant intentionally waited for part of it to collapse so they could file an insurance claim... The super boiling water that ran through it definitely was not pure H20. Chemicals were added to it (to keep it from evaporating?)
You're full of shit as a cooling tower works by evaporation.
The cooling tower doesn't circulate the pure water. Pure water is the dark blue loop in the graphic at 5:24. The cooling tower has the light blue loop and there you have barely purified water, drawn from a river, to which you need to add chemicals to prevent massive growth of biolfilms in the cozy warm cooling water loop. Yes that will not be clean and leave lots of fouling over time.
Hydropower, the force of naturally occurring water movement to rotate a turbine is more efficient, but we used most of the sources already. Wave power has potential, but a lot of drawbacks.
So, who wants to make a coal fired blender now?
Cant you just cool the water using district heating?
You can! And you should do that. But not the full thermal load, as district heating needs temperatures that are too high to operate the condenser efficiently. Can't run the power plant when the condenser has to work at 90 degC or so. You still need a cooling loop with cooling water.