Cooling-water tower (Merkel sizing)

A process cooling-water utility: a hot ethanol-water process stream is cooled against cooling water in a counter-current exchanger, and the warmed cooling water is then sent to an evaporative cooling tower that rejects the picked-up heat to ambient air and returns it cold. The tower reports the evaporation + blowdown makeup water and — because the wet-bulb temperature and the water-to-air ratio L/G are given — the Merkel tower characteristic KaV/L a designer sizes the fill to, plus the range (hot→cold water drop, 10 K here) and the approach to the wet-bulb (5 K). Rate a fill against that demand with the standalone Cooling tower (Merkel) analysis tool. Honest scope: the cooling-water side is shown open (supply → exchanger → tower → return); a real plant recycles the return with makeup, and the Merkel model carries Le=1 assumptions.