John W. Cooper, Jr., P.E.

John W. Cooper, Jr., P.E. has 42 years of experience as a power plant cooling tower thermal and hydraulic design engineer.  Before entering the cooling tower industry in 1976, he worked in the U.S. Space Program for 5 years in Huntsville, Alabama and in Florida.  He holds a BS degree in Biological Engineering (1970) and an MS degree in Mechanical Engineering (1971), both from Mississippi State University.

As Chief Thermal Engineer with Zurn Industries’ Cooling Tower Division in Tampa, Florida between 1976 and 1985, he learned the secrets of cooling tower thermal and hydraulic design engineering from seasoned German cooling tower engineers with Balcke Dürr Aktiengesellschaft, Zurn’s German licensor.  Under Zurn’s exclusive license agreement with Balcke-Dürr, Zurn paid royalties to Balcke on all constructed cooling towers in exchange for access to Balcke-Dürr’s proprietary thermal performance and pressure drop correlations for large cooling tower design.  As one of two persons in the Zurn organization that was granted access to the German thermal and hydraulic design information, he wrote Zurn’s complete library of FORTRAN cooling tower thermal and hydraulic design computer programs, incorporating the German correlations. Balcke-Dürr Ag, originally named Balcke Maschinenbau Aktiengesellschaft, was founded in Bochum, Germany in 1894 by Hans-Joachim Balcke, the inventor of the natural draft cooling tower.  It is noteworthy that John has enjoyed the benefits of being the only cooling tower thermal design engineer in the United States to have been apprenticed by Balcke engineers.

For the past 27 years, operating under the Corporate name, John Cooper & Associates, P.A., he has served the needs of the international electric power generation industry as an independent cooling tower consulting engineer, in matters relating to the thermal performance enhancement and practical operation of large natural draft and mechanical draft cooling towers.

On 32 occasions, over the past 33 years, John has shared his specialized cooling tower expertise with power plant engineers and managers in the United States and in Australia in the form of formal one or two-day training courses.

Publications

Brown, W.H. and J.W. Cooper, Jr., "Computer Simulation of the Psychrometric Chart", Proceedings of the 1971 Summer Computer Simulation Conference, Sponsored by ACM/AIAA/AIChE/AMS/BSC/IEEE/ISA/SCi/SHARE, Boston, Massachusetts, July 19-21, 1971, pp. 935-940.

Cooper, J.W. Jr., "A Computer Simulation of the Human Thermoregulatory System", NASA Report No. ASD-ASTN-1586, George C. Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, August 1972.

Forbes, R.E., and J.W. Cooper, Jr., "Natural Convection in a Horizontal Layer of Water Cooled from Above to Near Freezing".  Journal of Heat Transfer, Trans. ASME, Series C. Vol 87, No. 1, February 1975, pp. 47-53.

Cooper, J.W. Jr., and V. Vodicka, "Cooling Tower Ice Prevention Systems: State-of-the-Art Designs", Proceedings of the American Power Conference, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, Vol. 41, 1979, pp. 697-705.

Cooper, J.W. Jr., "Criteria for Ice Prevention in Counterflow Natural Draft Cooling Towers", Journal of the Cooling Tower Institute, Vol. 1, No.1, June 1980, pp. 47-53.

Cooper, J.W. Jr., "Recirculation and Interference Characteristics of Circular Mechanical Draft Cooling Towers", Journal of the Cooling Tower Institute, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1985, pp. 28-34.

Cooper, J.W. Jr., H.D. Treuberg, and H. Klauss, "Usage of Fiber Cement as A Film-Type Fill Media In Evaporative Cooling Towers", presented at the Annual Winter Conference of the Cooling Tower Institute, February 8-10, 1988.

Cooper, J.W. Jr. and R.O Fraze, "Exit Air Mapping as a Means of Identifying Sources of Thermal Performance Inefficiency in Counterflow Cooling Towers", presented at the Electric Power Research Institute's 1991 Heat Rate Improvement Conference, Scottsdale, Arizona, May 7-9, 1991.

Lees U.A. Jr. and J.W. Cooper, Jr., "Cost-Effective Thermal Performance Upgrade of the Callaway Plant Cooling Tower", presented at the Electric Power Research Institute's Cooling Tower and Advanced Cooling Systems Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, August 30 - September 1, 1994.

Liffick, G.W. and J.W. Cooper Jr., "Thermal Performance Upgrade of The Arkansas Nuclear One Cooling Tower: A 'Root Cause' Analysis Approach", presented at the American Power Conference, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois, April 18-20, 1995.

Burns, J., D. Godard, R. Randall, and J.W. Cooper, Jr., "Justifying Plans to Improve the Performance of An Existing Cooling System", presented at the 1996 EPRI Condenser Technology Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, August 28-30, 1996.

Cooper, G. P., III and J.W. Cooper, Jr., "Watts Bar Nuclear Unit 1 Cooling Tower Thermal Performance Upgrade: A Value Add Engineering Approach", presented at the EPRI Cooling Tower Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, August 11-14, 1997.

Closser, W.H., Jr. and J.W. Cooper, Jr., “Evaluating the Performance of Safety Related Cooling Towers”, presented at the 1999 EPRI Service Water Reliability Improvement Seminar, Biloxi, Mississippi, July 12-13, 1999.

Grindle, E., J.W. Cooper, Jr., and R. Lawson, “Improving Natural Draft Cooling Tower Performance with Heat Injection”, presented at the 2002 International Joint Power Generation Conference, Phoenix, Arizona, June 24-26, 2002

Bøgh, P., J.W. Cooper, Jr., I.M. Gozalo, H. Eitschberger, R.F. de Mata, W.Wittwer, and G. Manigley, “Technological Advances in Natural Draft Cooling Tower Thermal Performance Enhancement: Comparison of European and American Upgrade Methodologies and Experiences”, presented at the EPRI Cooling Tower Technology Conference, Charleston, South Carolina, August 26-28, 2003.

Cooper, J.W., Jr., “Cooling Tower Designs for Tomorrow’s Nuclear Power Plants”, presented at the EPRI Cooling Tower Technology Conference, Des Moines, Iowa, August 2-3, 2006.

Cooper, J.W., Jr., “Plume Buoyancy and the Impact of Cross-Winds on Cooling Tower Thermal Performance”, presented at the EPRI Cooling Tower Technology Conference, Cincinnati, Ohio, August 19-20, 2009.

Warren, B.E., J.W. Cooper, Jr., R. Fulkerson, M.D. Locke, and R.W. Richards, “Help for the Grand Gulf EPU”, Nuclear Engineering International, Vol. 57, No. 694, May 2012, pp. 42-43.

Cooper, J.W., Jr., Cuchens, J.W., and J.D. Calhoun, “Maintenance of Counterflow Natural Draft Cooling Towers Designed with Asbestos-Cement Internal Components”, presented at the EPRI Cooling Tower Technology Conference, Pensacola Beach, Florida, August 8-9, 2012.

Cooper, J.W., Jr., “Counterflow Cooling Tower Diagnostic Testing”, Presented at the EPRI Cooling Tower Technology Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, August 5-6, 2015.

Cooper, J.W., Jr., “The Evolution of Circular Counterflow Mechanical Draft Cooling Towers”, Accepted for presentation at the EPRI Cooling Tower Technology Conference, Baltimore, Maryland, August 15-16, 2018.