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 generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many p ...

natural draught The stack effect or chimney effect is the movement of air into and out of buildings through unsealed openings, chimneys, flue-gas stacks, or other containers, resulting from air buoyancy. Buoyancy occurs due to a difference in indoor-to-outdoor a ...

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 process heat and ...

, being built from 1918. HyperboloidOfOneSheet

Early life

He was born in

Roermond Roermond (; li, Remunj or ) is a city, municipality, and diocese in the 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 town rights in 1231. Roer ...

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

Delft University of Technology Delft University of Technology ( nl, Technische Universiteit Delft), also known as TU Delft, is the oldest and largest Dutch public technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. As of 2022 it is ranked by QS World University Rankings among ...

(''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 DSM or dsm may refer to: Science and technology * Deep space maneuver * Design structure matrix or dependency structure matrix, a representation of a system or project * Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ** DSM-5, the fifth ed ...

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 typic ...

s, in

octagon In geometry, an octagon (from the Greek ὀκτάγωνον ''oktágōnon'', "eight angles") 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, whi ...

planform In technical drawing and computer graphics, a multiview projection is a technique of illustration by which a standardized series of orthographic two-dimensional pictures are constructed to represent the form of a three-dimensional object. Up to ...

. 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 defo ...

'' 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 (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...

''; 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 Emma of Waldeck and Pyrmont (Adelheid Emma Wilhelmina Theresia; 2 August 1858 – 20 March 1934) was Queen of the Netherlands and Grand Duchess of Luxembourg as the wife of King-Grand Duke William III. An immensely popular member of the Dutch ...

, was the second-largest in the Netherlands, with the

Staatsmijn Maurits Staatsmijn Maurits was a state-owned coal mine in Geleen, Netherlands. In 1911 the Dutch Government bought the concessions "Maasvelden". In 1912 and 1913 drillings were carried out by the Internationale Bohrgesellschaft Erkelenz in the areas west ...

the largest. The Delft University of Technology still conducts much research on

coal technology Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when de ...

. 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 ( nl, Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, abbreviated: KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed ...

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

Bilfinger Bilfinger SE (previously named Bilfinger Berger AG) is a German company specialized in civil and industrial construction, engineering and services based in Mannheim, Germany. History Bilfinger dates back to 1880 when August Bernatz founded Be ...

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

References

External links

Designing Buildings

Bilfinger

Patents for cooling towers
at

Google Patents Google Patents is a search engine from Google that indexes patents and patent applications. Contents Google Patents indexes more than 87 million patents and patent applications with full text from 17 patent offices, including: * United States P ...