Splash Fills is made of many layers of slats or bars. When hot water comes into contact with the slats or bars, it breaks down into smaller particles. As these particles form, they allow for increased contact between the water and air which is contained within the air. This leads to a speedup in the rate of evaporation and cooling. Splash media used to be made using wood, but more modern designs are manufactured using PVC. PVC allows for a greater rate of heat transfer. Splash fill is normally used in industries that produce a lot of excess water which is of poor quality. Because the water is converted into smaller droplets any debris or dirt is separated.

Film types fills have been popular with the Cooling Tower Industry as a result of their efficiency of not only handling large quantities of water but also the overall tower efficiency. However in the case of heavily contaminated water, film type fills are susceptible to accumulating deposits and often make way for the use of splash type fills for effective water cooling. The forgiving nature of splash fills towards ‘dirty’ water and imperfect water distribution is offset by the need to have larger towers and thus higher capital costs as well as pumping heads.

PVC Splash Bar work on the principle of causing the flowing water to fall through a grid of ‘splash bars/grids’ causing the water droplets to break up and increasing the contact time between water and air. As the falling water encounters multiple layers of these splash fills, the droplets keep dividing into smaller sizes thereby increasing the heat transfer and thus cool the water.