Re: Why is water so greenish blue???
...and because of the nature of the system, it really would only be necessary to screen the water. Liquid cooling is used in place of air cooling ( which is used on most hydraulic systems) because using a liquid makes it possible to move a larger amount of heat in a smaller amount of time because water has a much higher heat capacity than air.
If the system maximum operating temperature is low enough (as it probably is) to keep unpressurized water from boiling, then it makes perfect sense to use the lagoon as a heat sink if only because that means there is no need for a separate cooling reservoir. Ideally, there should still be a water-air heat exchanger to remove some of the heat before the water goes back to the lagoon, but the same could be accomplished by putting the discharge and intake some distance from one another and letting the circulation in the lagoon take care of equalizing the temperature.
On a related note, has anybody here ever seen the outside of the transmitter plant for WLW radio down near Cincinnati? There is a nice pond with a fountain out in front of the building. The reason? That pond was used for cooling the half-megawatt transmitter.
Using the existing lagoon for cooling is a space- cost- and energy-saving trick that makes about as much sense as Cedar Point's use of Sandusky Bay as a reservoir for Thunder Canyon.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.