Frederik Karel Theodoor van Iterson (12 March 1877 – 11 December 1957) was a Dutch mechanical engineering professor, who largely developed the typical design of

power station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the electricity generation, generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electr ...

cooling tower A cooling tower is a device that rejects waste heat to the atmosphere through the cooling of a coolant stream, usually a water stream, to a lower temperature. Cooling towers may either use the evaporation of water to remove heat and cool the ...

, being built from 1918. Staatsmijn Emma Koeltoren III - Brunssum - 20260911 - RCE

Early life

He was born in

Roermond Roermond (; or ) is a city, municipality, and diocese in the Limburg (Netherlands), Limburg province of the Netherlands. Roermond is a historically important town on the lower Roer on the east bank of the river Meuse. It received City rights i ...

. He was the son of Gerrit van Iterson and Aghate Henrietta van Woelderen. He attended the

Delft University of Technology The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...

(''Technische Universiteit Delft'' or TU Delft). In 1899 he gained a diploma in Engineering (''ingenieursdiploma'').

Career

In 1910 he began teaching at the technical high school in Delft. He became Director of the Dutch State Mines ( DSM).

Cooling towers

He began work into the design of cooling towers. Previously, designs of cooling towers were more-or-less the same as

chimney A chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator, or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are typical ...

s, in

octagon In geometry, an octagon () is an eight-sided polygon or 8-gon. A '' regular octagon'' has Schläfli symbol and can also be constructed as a quasiregular truncated square, t, which alternates two types of edges. A truncated octagon, t is a ...

al planform. On 12 February 1915, the Dutch State Mines decided to build a new concrete cooling tower. This led to his work producing the ''hyperboloid'' design of cooling towers at the Staatsmijn Emma in 1918; the towers were demolished on 26 June 1985. This design of cooling towers was the world's first, and nearly all cooling towers now follow this ''

hyperboloid In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called a circular hyperboloid, is the surface generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. A hyperboloid is the surface obtained from a hyperboloid of revolution by def ...

'' design, with concrete structure. On 16 August 1916, he took out the UK patent (108,863) for ''Improved Construction of Cooling Towers of

Reinforced Concrete Reinforced concrete, also called ferroconcrete or ferro-concrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having higher tensile strength or ...

''; the patent was filed on 9 August 1917, and published on 11 April 1918. The Emma coal mine, named after Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont, was the second-largest in the Netherlands, with the Staatsmijn Maurits the largest. The Delft University of Technology still conducts much research on coal technology. In 1931 he won an award from the Koninklijk Instituut van Ingenieurs. In 1934 he was elected member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

. In 1945 he helped to establish Tebodin Consultants & Engineers, bought by Hollandse Beton Groep (HBS) in 2002, and now owned by Bilfinger of Germany since 2012.

Personal life

He married Jennie Woutera Rotgans on 24 December 1910. They had two daughters and a son. He lived at

Heerlen Heerlen (; ) is a city and a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the southeast of the Netherlands. It is the third largest settlement proper in the province of Limburg (Netherlands), Limburg. Measured as municipality, it is the f ...

References

External links

Designing Buildings

Bilfinger

Patents for cooling towers
at

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