Wet Cooling Tower Backfitting Economics

Following enactment of legislation designed to reduce thermal discharge to the environment, the electric utility industry is faced with the prospect of backfitting their existing installations with closed-cycle cooling systems of some sort. Wet cooling towers offer an attractive choice since they perform reliably and their design is an accomplished act. A technique is presented for evaluating the cost of backfitting a power plant currently using open-cycle cooling with a closed-cycle mechanical-draft crossflow wet cooling tower. Basic relations and normalized charts for estimating the total backfit cost have been developed and are prescribed that enable inclusion of first costs and continuing resultant operating costs appropriate to the backfit cost estimate. An example is given to illustrate the methodology and the relevant parameters for the cost estimation.