As one settles for the choice that they are going for Cooling Tower for their premises be it offices, hospitals, shopping mall, manufacturing facility etc. they are faced with next big question- which material to use as these are available in concrete, galvanised steel and stainless steel apart from Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic (FRP). These days manufacturers also offer a combination of these materials to meet client’s requirements.
For temperatures as high as seen in Delhi, galvanised steel is ruled out straight away leaving the choice between FRP and stainless steel. Some still use galvanised steel frame casing the panels with FRP but that is a bad structural design as this product is highly flammable and are not even strong enough. The two good materials to use would be stainless steel and FRP but it should be kept in mind that only high quality FRP is used. There are cheaper ones available in the market but those are compromised on corrosion quality, UV protection, flammability and structural strength. And these are precisely the reasons for popularity of FRP cooling towers.
Advantages of FRP are resistance to corrosion at low cost that stainless steel. As cooling towers are exposed all the time- they are affected by rain water, high temperatures, dust, wind etc. and also affected by airborne and waterborne pollutants and bacteria. Compared to steel, FRP also needs less maintenance- is light in weight making installation easier and hassle free. This has led to number of manufacturers to promote and sell FRP cooling towers but there is also low quality variety in the market which one should be wary of. Towers made of FRP have an additional advantage- their stress/ strain ratio is very high making them attractive to clients. If double FRP wall is used for construction, manufacturers can also make the tower resistant to fire i.e. it won’t spread to neighbouring structures and these structures also help contain noise within the tower. Thus though it all comes at an additional cost ~15% more, double wall FRP cooling towers are an attractive proposition.If a client is investing in cooling towers, they expect good returns and here also FRP ones don’t disappoint. If purchased from genuine manufacturer and maintained properly, the life span of these can be as good as 50 years and those of average quality would be ~20-25 years.
Thus we see that FRP cooling towers have a lot of advantages over other materials making it attractive for clients but they should carefully choose manufacturer who provides good quality to actually enjoy the benefits as the cheaper variants available in market would serve no good.
