What material is used in drift eliminators?

If your business is using cooling towers to get rid of unwanted or excess heat, you also need drift eliminators . These products are designed to catch the droplets of water from the air stream and return them into the tower.Now, you can get the different drift eliminators from cooling tower drift eliminators suppliers

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Various Typles of Drift Eliminators

Cooling Tower Drift Eliminator Types

What Is Drift Eliminator

Drift Eliminator is one of cooling tower parts. By using drift eliminators, water is effectively recycled. This does not only save water, but also prevents the escape of chemically contaminated water into the environment.

The most notable drift eliminator&#;s description is perhaps the one that indicates its aid in the reduction of water loss and emissions. Its main goal is to minimize the drift rate and pressure drop as much as possible.

The Benefits of Using Drift Eliminators

Installing drift eliminators in cooling towers, especially in large-scale production businesses has significant advantages not just for the owners but for nature as well:

• Keeps nearby roads and fields from icing.

• Prevents the corrosion of piping systems and electrical parts.

• Helps to prevent short circuits resulting from damaged electrical systems.

• Significantly reduces harmful emissions of chemicals into the environment.

• Largely contributes to water conservation.

• Reduction of pressure drop in water.

• Eliminates the need for additional water treatment.

• Extends the life of a cooling tower.

• Conserves energy use.

Cooling Tower Drift Eliminators Key Structures

A drift eliminator is a simple but significant part of a cooling tower. With its simplicity, it is only composed of few basic structures that make it a useful accessory that is also quite easy to install and use.

Seal

Seal prevent drift bypass, seals are usually added during the installation process. This ensures that no droplets of water can escape during the redirection process.

Filter

Filters help to remove contaminants such as chemicals that can be released into the environment.

Walls or blades

While the designs for walls or blades may vary, they all function as the main structure that propels the direction of water into the desired direction. Depending on the design, this part forces water droplets back into the cooling tower to be used again.

Seal - to prevent drift bypass, seals are usually added during the installation process. This ensures that no droplets of water can escape during the redirection process.

Types of Drift Eliminators

There are a handful of available drift eliminator designs today. However, these models are generally classified only into two main types of drift eliminators:

Counterflow Drift Eliminators - this type employs a mechanism where the air flows through the fillings in a vertical path at the top. On the other hand, the water flows from top to bottom, which makes it possible to exhaust more air faster than the process of pulling it in.

Advantages of Use

• Lower energy consumption.

• Maintenance is minimal.

• Lower pumphead.

• Plume Abated Systems.

Crossflow Drift Eliminators - on the contrary, this eliminator type has a horizontal air flow while water flows in the same downward manner. This type of eliminator also uses a splash type of fill.

Advantages of Use

• Minimal noise.

• Cost-effective.

• Low maintenance required.

• High performance.

• Consumed energy is optimized

Different Drift Eliminator Designs

The following design types may come in either crossflow or counterflow mechanism. Essentially, this means they are installed horizontally (counterflow) or vertically (crossflow).

Blade - made of gauge blades which are bound by caps at both ends. Blade designs are intended to be light in weight but strong in durability.

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Cellular - these closed cells look like structured waves, which can force droplets of drift into three different directions. By doing this, a centrifugal force is created to keep the drift away from the stream of air.

Cassette - this lightweight but robust design makes lifting and removal easier. It is also ideally used in retrofitting and has a longer lifespan.

Fill-integrated - this type uses fillings such as carbon black, which is integrated inside the main material to enhance it lifespan. The use of fillings also helps to protect the primary material from corrosion.

Common Materials Used in Drift Eliminators

There are only a few drift eliminator materials used by manufacturers today. However, this makes options easier, which does not necessarily skimp on quality since they are also designed to serve their purposes best.

Polypropylene (PP) - a recyclable material that is both plastic and fiber, polypropylene can tolerate heat better than PVC. PP is also resistant against moisture but is susceptible to degradation when constantly exposed to UV.

Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) - the most commonly used and also the lowest in cost, PVC drift eliminators are resistant from corrosion. However, PVC is also known to have toxic byproducts.

Metal - with its more robust nature, steel drift eliminators are ideal for use in higher temperatures and container shipments. However, metal is prone to corrosion, but can be reinforced with a coating for protection.

Cooling Tower Drift Eliminators The The Specifications

The number of models available in the market today will come with varied specifications that may confuse those who are new in the business. While the intended use will vary, these are the common specifications that you should always look at:

• Installation type (counterflow or crossflow).

• Design Type (blade type, cellular type, and cassette type, etc.).

• Dimensions (depth, width, and length).

• Blade spacing and thickness (when applicable).

• Maximum span

• Sheet size (when applicable)

• Gauge

The Ideal Features of Drift Eliminators

Finally, when choosing from your narrowed down options, make sure that the model meets most, if not all of the following features:

• Certified and compliant with safety regulations.

• Easy to use, inspect, and maintain.

• Can maintain total drift loss by at least .001%.

• High performance.

• Cost efficient.

• Adjustable and flexible for conversion.

• Seamless in process

Conclusion

If drift eliminators have been used for many years, drift eliminators should be replaced. We have provided you with all the different drift eliminators you need, such as marley cooling tower drift eliminators, evapco drift eliminator kit. you can consult with cooling tower drift eliminator suppliers with more confidence. With all the benefits that businesses with cooling towers can get from drift eliminators, it is apparent that they are quite a beneficial product.

The two most common polymers used in cooling tower fills and drift eliminators are polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polypropylene (PP). Both materials offer the benefits of durability, compatibility with the water environments of most cooling towers and processes, and cost-effective manufacturing techniques to provide many different engineered profiles suitable for cooling tower uses. However, one of the impediments that both polymers present is their hydrophobic nature. The surface energy of PVC and PP are high enough to want to repel water and make it bead up on the surface. Unfortunately, this action is detrimental to the performance of fills and drift eliminators, which achieve their full potential when the water fully wets the polymer surface.

The resistance to wetting out is related to the surface energy of the polymer. Here is a table listing the available Surface Free Energy (SFE) of several different materials:

PP has much lower surface free energy than PVC, therefore its draw to water is less. Lower SFE yields greater &#;beading action.&#; For example, Teflon (PTFE) has very low SFE, and we all know how water beads up on Teflon-coated cookware and runs right off. That is the exact opposite of what we want water to do on fills and drift eliminators.

Fill Performance

Brentwood&#;s previous testing conducted on fill materials shows the benefits of conditioning (also called, &#;seasoning&#; or &#;aging&#;) on fill packs. Both PVC and PP packs of the same model were tested at various stages of conditioning and at different water loadings. The fills&#; performance was directly related to the amount of time spent being conditioned up until the time that the pack fully wetted out. For PVC, this occurred in about half the time that PP required. For some low water loading applications, the asymptotic curve suggests that PP might never be fully wetted, and therefore, can never meet 100% capability.

Drift Eliminator Performance

Drift eliminators are affected the same way as fills when it comes to their performance in relation to surface conditioning. The efficiency of a drift eliminator relies on the captured drift droplets forming a thin film of water on the drift eliminator surface so that the water drains back into the wet section of the cooling tower properly. Any beads of water on the surface are exposed to the air stream and are susceptible to being stripped off the drift eliminator and exiting the tower.

Brentwood has had several reports over the years, where new PVC drift eliminators were installed, stating that there was a problem with the product since there were signs of drift issues. The problems disappeared after the eliminators had sufficient time to condition via normal operation of the tower with full heat load, which is typically at least 1,000 hours of service.

What is important to note is that as drift emission restrictions become more stringent, the potential for any perturbation in the air/water interface to cause a failed drift test increases dramatically. If you look at the comparative rates of conditioning of the film fills above, you will note that the water loading on the fill plays a part in the efficiency. Consider that even after three weeks in the accelerated aging tank &#; at 3.5 gpm/ft2 (8.6m3/hr·m2) &#; the fill was only at just over 90% capability. If you were to extrapolate the capability out by month, it does not seem like it would ever reach full potential. That means that the water might never fully wet out the surface.

Now take into account that those are the results of a fill product that has water intentionally sprayed onto the plastic itself. What might be the difference for a drift eliminator that only gets a tiny fraction of the water spray that a fill sees? If the water is not able to ever form a complete film on the surface of the drift eliminator, then the full potential of the drift eliminator efficiency will never be realized. This shows just how important the material of construction can be with respect to a drift eliminator.