Hi there everyone,
Let me start this by saying that this is an honest question. I figure nobody would be better suited to answer my question than a group laser-focused on the negatives of the technology.
I see these types of memes a lot and see statistics of gallons consumed in a lot of articles I read. What I don't understand though is where the water goes that it can't be reclaimed or naturally return from a gas to a liquid.
As a kid(long ago), I was taught of the cycle of rain and the conversion between gases and liquid. It's my understanding that when a liquid is used to cool something, it also follows the same conversion process as it cools.
Could someone explain to me what's going on in this process where the 264 billion gallons of water used in the meme do not return to a liquid state?
I would appreciate any insight into the process that seems to defy this cycle that I am missing. Like I said prior, my knowledge of this process ended in middle school science class so I'm confident that I'm missing something.
Thanks for your time!
Hello I’ve used this as an example video in the past, I occasionally work on cooling towers and usually the maintance is not always the best, so I can’t imagine what they’re doing since it’s kinda hush hush for people working on them so I can’t give information on exactly how their systems work but evaporative is pretty common and air chilled sites are something I come across too but not as often as evaporative[Evaporative cooling tower](Evaporative cooling tower https://youtu.be/dg4L_xdaIIs)
When the water evaporates it leaves behind the minerals so it builds up quick. There’s maintance that you have to do on them and depending on the place there are regular water changes since the minerals build up. Places that have hard water I would assume change more often plus there is legionnaires from the water too since it’s a good environment for bacteria and other shit. Which can also get put into the air as droplets and assuming you have a humid day it could also make the workers or people near sick. Plus water usage can vary since maintance is not always top priority for companies so a bad float valve can passively just dump water back into the city system
Funny enough the towers in this video have been replaced with newer ones, that also leaked out of the sides xD