Decommissioning of Cool Towers Will Curb Water Use by 50%

Replacing water-intensive cool towers with dry towers in thermal power plants tops the Energy Ministry’s priority list, as it can curb water extraction from ground resources by at least 50%, managing director of Thermal Power Plants Holding Company said.
“The scheme has yielded positive results in Hamedan’s Shahid Mofatteh Thermal Power Station and all cool towers in Iran will be decommissioned gradually,” Mohsen Tarztalab was also quoted as saying by IRNA.
Because there are many cool towers in the drought-stricken central plateau and it is impossible to substitute them with dry towers in the near future, the ministry has obliged all thermal power stations with wet cooling towers to use treated wastewater, he added.
In Isfahan and Yazd, which have long suffered chronic water deficits, dry towers have the ability to cut water consumption by at least 50%. 
Wet towers have high cooling capacity. However, due to high water consumption, their use in arid regions, saddled with a water crisis, cause operational problems. In dry cooling towers, there is no direct contact between the working fluid and the ambient air, so there is no water loss in the process.
One dry cooling tower went on stream at Shahid Mofatteh Thermal Power Station in 2015, which reduced water consumption from 3 million cubic meters to 600,000 cubic meters per day. Work is in progress on the second dry cooling tower and it is expected to come on stream in 2022.
SMTPP is located 47 km northeast of Hamedan. It has a design capacity of 1000 MW and four units. 
According to Tarztalab, despite the growing menace of land subsidence in arid regions, power stations are not in danger yet.
Over-extraction from renewable and underground water resources is the main culprit behind land subsidence in cities like Tehran and the northeastern regions where land on average sinks almost by 30 centimeters a year.
Conditions are deteriorating in other regions as well.