Graduating to plastics.

This article focuses on the role of cooling towers in many industrial processes. Aside from unplanned emergencies, cooling towers that are overworked, are out of service, or require periodic rebuilding or replacement also exact a severe toll in terms of lost production, labor, and materials. For these reasons, plant engineers are realizing that when the time comes to retrofit or expand a cooling system, the reliability of its cooling tower ranks is as important as its installation costs. Faced with the choice of a metal or an engineered-plastic tower, more engineers and plant managers are opting for the latter. New developments increasingly tip the scales in favor of plastic cooling towers that weigh less, have a higher through-put, are more energy efficient, and cost less to maintain. Today's industrial cooling towers have come a long way from the simple heat-exchanger designs of their ancestors, which date back to the 1890s. Yet only in the past decade have tower designs been modernized to minimize the expense of upkeep, repair, and replacement. A very important step in the evolution has been the recent availability of corrosion-proof, polyethylene-plastic cooling towers that never rust, chip, flake, or peel.