Burdick Unit 3 Cooling Tower the day after the June 3rd 1980 tornado.

The C.W. Burdick Generating Station steam generating Unit 3 is upgrading its existing cooling tower.  The cross flow Marley cooling tower was a wood structure built in 1969.  The tower served the City of Grand Island for 38 years and survived the 1980 tornados, sustaining an indirect hit.  

Unit 3 was online at the time and remained operational as power was slowly restored to the city.  The fan stacks on top of the tower were completely destroyed, and the tower structure received severe structural damage that was not discovered until several months later.  After tornado damage and nearly 40 years of weather exposure, the tower was no longer structurally sound.  It was leaning to the south about five degrees from vertical and structural consultants advised that it was in danger of collapsing. 

Normal life expectancy for a wood cooling tower is 25 to 30 years.  In order to maintain reliability of this generating unit, the cooling tower needed to be replaced.  Therefore, power plant staff prepared specifications to place a new tower on the existing concrete water basin.  The new cooling tower is a counter flow design made from structural fiberglass and PVC fill materials.  The counter flow design is smaller and more efficient with clean water, such as the water provided from the city’s wells. 

The photos below show demolition work in various stages of completion.

What is the cooling tower used for?  The cooling tower and associated piping circulate water through the condenser.  In the condenser, the exhausted steam from the turbine is cooled back to a liquid state so it can be pumped back into the boiler and be reused.  In the cooling tower three large fans, 30 feet in diameter, circulate air that comes in contact with the water that was pumped through the condenser and then through the cooling tower.  As the hot water from the condenser comes in contact with the air in the cooling tower, there is an evaporative cooling of the water.  During the hottest time of the year, the cooling tower will cool the water from 102 degrees Fahrenheit down to 85 degrees Fahrenheit.

When you see the cooling tower in operation, you will see fine droplets of water that are emitted out of the top of the fan stacks.  On the new cooling tower, there will be less water emitted into the atmosphere due to more efficient drift eliminators.  The drift eliminators are placed between where the water enters the cooling tower and the air exits the tower, separating the water from the air.  The water then drops back down into the cooling tower basin to be reused, conserving water.