COOLING TOWERS |
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Cooling towers are structures for cooling water or other working medium to near-ambient temperature. The primary use of large, industrial cooling towers is to lower the temperature of the cooling water used in power plants, petroleum refineries, petrochemical plants, natural gas processing plants and other industrial facilities. It is desirable to cool the water rather than simply discharging it because the cooling water is typically demineralized and it is cheaper to cool it rather than getting more demineralized water. Furthermore, discharging large amounts of hot water may raise the temperature of the receiving river or lake to an unacceptable level for the local ecosystem. A cooling tower serves to dissipate the heat into the atmosphere instead and wind and air diffusion spreads the heat over a much larger area than hot water can distribute heat in a body of water.
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HYDROLOGY |
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Hydrology (from Greek: Yδρoλoγια, Yδωρ+Λoγos, Hydrologia, the "study of water") is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water throughout the Earth, and thus addresses both the hydrologic cycle and water resources. A practitioner of hydrology is a hydrologist, working within the fields of either earth or environmental science, or civil and environmental engineering.
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METEOROLOGY |
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Meteorology is the scientific study of the atmosphere that focuses on weather processes and forecasting. Meteorological phenomena are observable weather events which illuminate and are explained by the science of meteorology. Those events are bound by the variables that exist in Earth's atmosphere. They are temperature, pressure, water vapor, and the gradients and interactions of each variable, and how they change in time. The majority of Earth's observed weather is located in the troposphere.
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MINERALS, OIL, GAS |
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Fuel oil is a fraction obtained from petroleum distillation, either as a distillate or a residue. Broadly speaking, fuel oil is any liquid petroleum product that is burned in a furnace for the generation of heat or used in an engine for the generation of power, except oils having a flash point of approximately 40 °C (about 100 °F) and oils burned in cotton or wool-wick burners. In this sense, diesel is a type of fuel oil. Fuel oil is made of long hydrocarbon chains, particularly alkanes, cycloalkanes and aromatics. Factually and in a stricter sense, the term fuel oil is used to indicate the heaviest commercial fuel that can be obtained from crude oil, heavier than gasoline and naphtha.
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POWER PLANTS |
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A fossil fuel power plant is an energy conversion center that combusts fossil fuels to produce electricity, designed on a large scale for continuous operation.
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