When it comes to the traditional chill tower most end up going the bong style route, simply because material wise you cannot beat PVC pipe to create it out of, if that is what you are considering, I have some suggestions to share for increased cooling performance.
Unfortunately one thing you have to first decide is how you will be dealing with the forced evaporation out of the top of the tower, because not dealing with it and exhausting it into the room will end up possibly making you sick, and if over time the right environment is created could kill you, from something like
legionnaires disease.Seeing as how even a small evaporation chill tower works on exactly the same principal as the industrial type, it can become a breeding ground for some pretty unfriendly stuff you will need to take precautions against, this is a possible big negative you need to be fully aware of and take precautions against.
Just because Bill, Joe, Harry, Larry, and Bob, have had their systems up and running a couple of years without any safety precautions in place, doesn't mean every day they're not playing Russian Roulette with their health!
I'm not trying to scare you out of it, if you really want to take this cooling route, you'll do it anyway, I'm just relating you need to proceed with all the possible facts.
So before I end up writing an entire page here for nothing, what are your plans to proceed?
You heat exchanger idea may not cool as well as you think, that's why most experimenting went straight to the bong approach, for the lowest water temperatures they could get, however on the other hand it may very well cool great.
Anyway you look at it a part of that type setup can and will be a breeder of some type of the health unfriendlies, but that doesn't mean some chemical treatment cannot control it.
