A hyperboloid cooling tower was patented by the Dutch engineers Frederik van Iterson and Gerard Kuypers in the Netherlands on August 16, 1916.[10] The first hyperboloid reinforced concrete cooling towers were built by the Dutch State Mine (DSM) Emma in 1918 in Heerlen.[11] The first ones in the United Kingdom were built in 1924 at Lister Drive power station in Liverpool, England.[12] On both locations they were built to cool water used at a coal-fired electrical power station.
According to a Gas Technology Institute (GTI) report, the indirect–dew-point evaporative-cooling Maisotsenko Cycle (M-Cycle) is a theoretically sound method of reducing a working fluid to the ambient fluid’s dew point, which is lower than the ambient fluid’s wet-bulb temperature. The M-cycle utilizes the psychrometric energy (or the potential energy) available from the latent heat of water evaporating into the air. While its current manifestation is as the M-Cycle HMX for air conditioning, through engineering design this cycle could be applied as a heat- and moisture-recovery device for combustion devices, cooling towers, condensers, and other processes involving humid gas streams.
The consumption of cooling water by inland processing and power plants is estimated to reduce power availability for the majority of thermal power plants by 2040–2069.[13]
In 2021, researchers presented a method for steam recapture. The steam is charged using an ion beam, and then captured in a wire mesh of opposite charge. The water’s purity exceeded EPA potability standards