When ice forms, panic leads to silence. Silence leads to stagnation. Stagnation leads to a tower that looks less like a heat exchanger and more like a frozen waterfall. A frozen cooling tower cannot be thawed with steam hoses; it must be rebuilt in April.
For nine months of the year, the cooling tower is the unglamorous workhorse of the industrial plant—loud, wet, and largely ignored. But when the mercury dips below 32°F (0°C), this same piece of equipment transforms overnight into the plant’s most vulnerable asset. Winter operation is not about efficiency; it is about survival. cooling tower handbook
From the Cooling Tower Handbook, 4th Edition When ice forms, panic leads to silence
As ambient temperature drops, the cooling tower’s capacity for heat rejection actually skyrockets. A tower designed to cool 100°F water down to 85°F on a 95°F summer day can easily overcool that same water to 40°F or lower on a 20°F winter night. While this sounds like a performance gain, it leads to the "Ice Paradox": The better the tower performs thermally, the faster it self-destructs structurally. A frozen cooling tower cannot be thawed with