Enhancing performance of wet cooling towers

Rafat Al-Waked*, Masud Behnia

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

99 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The effect of windbreak walls on the thermal performance of natural draft wet cooling towers (NDWCT) under crosswind has been investigated numerically. The three dimensional CFD model has utilised the standard k-ε turbulence model as the turbulence closure to quantify the effects of the locations and porosities of the wall on the NDWCT thermal performance. Moreover, the improvement in the NDWCT thermal performance due to windbreak walls has been examined at different crosswind directions. Results from the current investigation have demonstrated that installing solid impermeable walls in the rain zone results in degrading the performance of the NDWCT. However, installing solid walls at the inlet of the NDWCT has enhanced the NDWCT performance at all of the investigated crosswind velocities. Similarly, installing walls with low porosity has shown improvement in the performance of the NDWCT. A reduction of 0.5-1 K in the temperature of the cooling water coming from the tower to the condenser has been achieved at all of the investigated crosswind velocities by installing porous walls both inside and outside the rain zone.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2638-2648
Number of pages11
JournalEnergy Conversion and Management
Volume48
Issue number10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2007
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • CFD
  • Cooling tower
  • Heat and mass transfer
  • Thermal performance
  • Windbreak walls

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