Industrial cooling guide
Cooling-Tower Water Balance
Evaporation, blowdown, drift and makeup as linked water streams.
Safety boundary: this page is conceptual. It does not provide refrigerant charging/recovery steps, chemical water-treatment recipes, pressure-system procedures, electrical work, machine settings or hazardous maintenance instructions.
What this topic covers
Evaporation, blowdown, drift and makeup as linked water streams.
Core thermal ideas
Evaporation removes heat and water from the circulating loop.
Blowdown controls dissolved-solids concentration by intentionally removing some circulating water.
Makeup replaces evaporation, blowdown, drift and other losses.
System tradeoffs
Wet-bulb temperature constrains evaporative cooling, while airflow, fill condition and water distribution affect approach.
What to monitor
Water treatment, biological control and drift management are specialist programs and chemical recipes are intentionally excluded.
Lifecycle perspective
Resource performance should consider fan power, pump power, water makeup and blowdown together.