In the clouds

You see them almost every day at Chemelot in Sittard-Geleen, white clouds from that tall tower. But what are they

That tower is the cooling tower and belongs to the ammonia factories of OCI Nitrogen. To make ammonia, you need cold water and the cooling tower. The cooling tower at Chemelot is a tower designed to remove heat from the chemical process industry.

The cooling water to be cooled flows downwards on the inside of the tower and can exchange heat with the ambient air according to the counterflow principle or the crossflow principle.

A cooling tower is therefore not a chimney from which smoke escapes. The mist that can sometimes be seen above a cooling tower is nothing more than water vapor and has the same composition as a normal cloud.