Final answer:
Cooling towers utilize atmospheric air to increase the rate of evaporation, efficiently dissipating heat by leveraging water's ability to absorb significant amounts of heat.
Step-by-step explanation:
Cooling towers operate by exposing a large water surface area to atmospheric air. This method increases the rate of evaporation, leveraging water's high specific heat and the cooling effect of evaporation to remove heat from systems such as power plants or industrial processes. By circulating cooler air over warmer water, the efficiency of the cooling process is dramatically increased, allowing for the dissipation of a large amount of heat with a much smaller volume of air compared to simply heating the air.
Water vapor plumes often seen above cooling towers are a visible sign of this evaporative cooling process. Whether in nuclear power stations or coal-fired power stations, both use cooling towers where water evaporates into the environment, which is a practical application of the concept that water can absorb and carry away large quantities of heat.