Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648

www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Enhancing performance of wet cooling towers

a,* b
Rafat Al-Waked , Masud Behnia
a
Umow Lai Enginuity Pty Ltd., Consulting Engineers, Level 1, 360 Pacic Highway, Crows Nest, NSW 2065, Australia
b
Dean of Graduate Studies, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia

Received 18 September 2006; accepted 29 April 2007

Available online 13 June 2007

Abstract

The eect 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 ke turbulence model as the turbulence closure to
quantify the eects 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 dierent 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 reduc-
tion of 0.51 K in the temperature of the cooling water coming from the tower to the condenser has been achieved at all of the inves-
tigated crosswind velocities by installing porous walls both inside and outside the rain zone.
2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Cooling tower; Thermal performance; Heat and mass transfer; CFD; Windbreak walls

1. Introduction As the heat of the water is transferred to the air passing

A natural draft wet cooling tower (NDWCT) is the cor-
nerstone of the cooling system in use in large modern ther-
mal power plants. In NDWCT, a combination of heat and
mass transfer eects are used to cool the water coming
from the turbines condenser. The hot water, coming from
the condenser, is sprayed on top of splash bars or lm lls
in order to expose a very large portion of water surface to
the cooling ambient air. The moisture content of the cool-
ing air is less than the moisture content of saturated air at
the hot water temperature, which results in evaporating an
amount of water. The energy required for evaporation is
extracted from the remaining water, hence reducing its
temperature. The cooled water is then collected at the basin
of the NDWCT and pumped back into the condenser,
completing its circuit as shown in Fig. 1.
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 9431 9453, mobile: +61 4 0546
5444; fax: +61 2 9437 3120.
E-mail address: rafat@UNSWalumni.com (R. Al-Waked).
through the tower, the warmed air tends to rise and draw in
fresh air at the base of the tower, which makes the cooling
process dependent on crosswind conditions. Ineciency in
the cooling process of these towers results in a continuous
loss of power generation. Even the loss of a few megawatts,
representing a fraction of a percent of the total plant gen-
eration, may amount to millions of dollars per year [1].
This continuous power loss, however, may be insignicant
in comparison to load reductions that may be required to
achieve an internal temperature limit during extremely
hot meteorological conditions.
The degradation in thermal performance of cooling tow-
ers after installation has highlighted the importance of
crosswinds. Although crosswind eects on the performance
of cooling towers is well known, the corresponding amount
of research is still very small.
Experimental approaches conducted for a full scale
cooling tower would be costly and time consuming [25].
It would be dicult to obtain an accurate measurement
of the air distribution and ow resistance within the towers

0196-8904/$ - see front matter 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2007.04.018
 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648 2639

Nomenclature

A area (m2) u, v, w velocity components in x-, y- and z-directions,

CD drag coecient respectively (m s1)
cp specic heat (J kg1 K1) x, y, z cartesian coordinates
D diameter (m) y height above ground level (m)
F force (N)
g gravitational acceleration (m s2) Greek letters
h convective heat transfer coecient (W m2 K1) a porosity (ratio of ow area to total wall area)
Hi height of NDWCT inlet (m) e turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate (m2 s3)
hfg latent enthalpy of evaporation (kJ kg1) / variable quantity (1, U, V, W, T, Yv, k, e)
k turbulent kinetic energy (m2 s2) Dp pressure (kg m1 s2)
kf non-dimensional pressure loss coecient C/ diusion coecient of variable quantity /
M mass (kg) q air density (kg m3)
mw water mass ow rate (kg s1)
p pressure (N m2) Subscripts
Pr laminar Prandtl number a air
Prt turbulent Prandtl number adb air dry bulb
Q rejected heat (W) cw crosswind
S/ volumetric source term of given scalar quantity D drag
/ m mass
Sp/ volumetric source term due to interaction be- ma moist air
tween air and water droplet p particle (water droplet)
T temperature (K) ref reference point, considered to be 10 m above
t time (s) ground level
Vp component of ow velocity perpendicular to v vapor
surface (m s1) w water

harsh environment. Scale modelling of these transport pro-

Hot humid air cesses within an entire tower, on the other hand, would be
Tower virtually impossible. This is because not all the necessary
outlet conditions of similarity, including two phase ow, could
be fullled adequately. Analytical solutions of these pro-
cesses in a cooling tower would also be dicult to obtain
Tower throat but could be achieved using numerical modelling [6,7].
Recent advances in computer technology and computa-
tional uid dynamics (CFD) have led to the development
Drift of fast and reliable numerical codes, which allow optimum
eliminators design of cooling towers to be obtained [814].
Tower shell
The eects of windbreak walls on the thermal perfor-
Water spray
mance of natural draft dry cooling towers (NDDCTs) have
system
been investigated by researchers who utilised CFD tech-
Fill niques [1518]. The results from these investigations have
highlighted the improvement in the thermal performance
Tower inlet of NDDCTs due to windbreak walls. One of the few pub-
Cold dry lications on the eect of windbreaks on the thermal perfor-
air mance of wet cooling towers belongs to Bender et al.
[19,20]. They have investigated the eect of crosswinds
Tower Fill
supports and windbreak walls on a double cell mechanical induced
supports
cooling tower. They reported that the location and porosity
Water basin
of the wall were the dominant parameters that aect the
Hot water towers intake ow rates, whereas the walls height was less
from Cold water
condenser
important.
to pump
The importance of windbreak walls in reducing the neg-
Fig. 1. Counter ow natural draft wet cooling tower. ative eect of crosswinds on the performance of cooling
2640 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648

towers has been demonstrated in the early research. How- The temperature of the smooth water droplet is updated
ever, the eect of windbreak walls on the performance of according to the heat balance between the sensible heat
NDWCTs has not yet been reported. The current investiga- change in the droplet and the convective and evaporative
tion focuses on conducting numerical experiments by using heat transfer between the droplet and the air phase as
CFD techniques in an eort to understand the eect of dened in the following equation:
crosswinds on the thermal performance of NDWCTs more dT p dM p
clearly. Furthermore, it focuses on developing curative M p cp hAp T adb  T p hfg 5
dt dt
devices capable of reducing the negative eect of cross-
winds on NDWCTs. Heat, mass and momentum gained or lost by any stream
of water droplets that follow the same trajectory to the sur-
1.1. Governing equations rounding air are calculated and are incorporated into the
subsequent air phase calculation as source terms (Sp/)
In FLUENT [21], the air ow is solved as a continuous according to Eqs. (6)(8), respectively:
phase using the Eulerian approach. However, droplet tra-   Z Tp 
M p;av DM p
jectories are solved as a dispersed phase using the Lagrang- Q cp;p DT p hfg cpv dT mp;0 6
M p;0 M p;0 T ref
ian approach.
DM p
The air ow equations that describe heat, mass and M mp;0 7
momentum transfer can be written as a general equation M p;0
!
having the form of: X 3 lC D Re
F vp  v F other mp;0 Dt 8
4 qp D2p
r  qma u/  C/ r/ S / S p/ 1

where qma is the moist air density, u is the velocity vector, / 1.2. Boundary conditions
is the scalar quantity for u, v, w, T, Yv, k and e, C/ is the
diusion coecient, S/ is the source term for the air phase The cylindrical numerical domain shown in Fig. 2 has a
and Sp/ is the additional source due to the interaction be- height and a radius of 500 m. The NDWCT under investi-
tween the air and the water droplets. gation is 129.8 m high with a base diameter of 95.2 m and
According to the Lagrangian reference frame, the an inlet height of 8.6 m. The numerical domain consists of
equation of motion relates the water droplet velocity to 600 thousand structured and unstructured (hybrid) mesh
its trajectory. The trajectory of the water droplet is pre- elements. The number of mesh elements has been kept con-
dicted by integrating the force balance on the droplet as stant for all cases under investigation. In addition, the
dened in Eq. (2) for the y-direction in the Cartesian mesh element size has been smoothly stretched to resolve
coordinates. the high gradient regions and to ensure an accurate resolu-
tion of both the temperature and velocity elds.
dvp gqp  qma At the inlet velocity boundary, the air dry bulb temper-
F D v  vp F other 2
dt qp ature (Tadb) and vapor mass fraction (mfv) have been
provided in accordance with Table 1. In addition, the
The drag coecient for a smooth spherical droplet is a crosswind velocity magnitude has been provided according
function of Reynolds number (Re), which is a function of to Eq. (9) in which the reference velocity is evaluated at an
the relative velocity between the water droplet and the elevation of 10 m above ground level.
air. Furthermore, trajectory equations and any other aux-
iliary equations describing heat or mass transfer to/from
the droplet are solved by stepwise integration over discrete
time steps.
Heat transferred from the water droplet into the sur-
rounding air inside the NDWCT consists of both convec-
tive and evaporative heat transfer. The heat transfer
coecient (h) is evaluated using the correlation of Ranz
and Marshal [22,23] as dened in Eq. (3). Similarly, the
mass transfer coecient (hm) is calculated from the heat
and mass transfer analogy as dened in Eq. (4).

hDp
Nu 2:0 0:6Re0:5 Pr0:33
ma 3
k ma
hm D p
Sh 2:0 0:6Re0:5 Sc0:33
ma 4
Dva Fig. 2. Numerical domain utilised in the current study.
 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648 2641

Table 1 The main advantage of the water lm ow on the ll

Reference operating parameters and ambient conditions of the investi- surface is the large exposed area of the water to the cooling
gated NDWCT
air, which enhances the cooling process. The droplet ow,
Reference conditions on the other hand, does not have such an advantage unless
Air dry bulb temperature 297.1 K the droplet diameter becomes unrealistically small. In order
Air wet bulb temperature 291.5 K to balance the thermal exchange process, the time of con-
Atmospheric pressure 91.0 kPa
Droplet diameter 5 mm
tact between the droplet and the cooling air has been
Number of nozzles 5097 lengthened via controlling the droplet velocity. As a conse-
Range 13.3 K quence, there is more time for the evaporation from the
Water ow rate 15.4 m3/s droplet to the cooling air to occur, hence a better cooling
Water inlet temperature 315.3 K process. Therefore, the use of droplet ow in the ll zone
has served as a medium capable of supplying heat and mass
 0:2 transfer. Furthermore, it served as an outstanding means to
U cw y predict the non-uniformity in the temperature distribution
9
U cw;ref y ref of the droplets. It is worth mentioning that the pressure
At the pressure outlet boundary, both Tadb and mfv have losses correlation has been provided externally as a bound-
been given the same values as those at the velocity inlet ary condition.
boundary. Instead of providing the velocity magnitude,
the gauge pressure with reference to atmospheric pressure 1.4. Pressure losses
given in Table 1 has been provided. The wall boundary
condition has been used to bound the uid and solid As the air ows through the NDWCT, it suers pressure
regions. The no slip boundary condition has been used at losses that can be expressed in terms of a pressure loss coef-
the solid boundaries, ground and the NDWCTs shell. cient, the air density and the perpendicular velocity com-
As the water ows out of the spray nozzles, it forms a ponent across the surface as dened in Eq. (10). The main
three dimensional stream of water droplets. The initial pressure losses throughout the NDWCT are caused by the
velocity and direction of the stream have been provided shell supports, ll, water distribution pipes and drift elimi-
at the beginning of the simulation in addition to the inlet nators. Pressure losses due to the drag force from water
water temperature, mass ow rate and droplet diameter. droplets at both the rain and spray zones are calculated
internally by FLUENT.
1.3. Fill zone 1
Dp k f qV 2p 10
2
The main characteristics of any lm ll are the heat and
In the current CFD model, the values of the pressure
mass transfer in addition to the pressure drop within it. The
loss coecients have been added together as a single coef-
heat and mass transfer are presented via heat and mass
cient (kf) and applied at the drift eliminators boundary.
transfer coecients. The pressure drop, on the other hand,
At the reference conditions, kf is found to satisfy Eq.
is presented via a pressure loss coecient. Because of lim-
(11). On the other hand, the shell supports loss coecient,
itations in the current CFD code, the water ow at the ll
which is a function of the perpendicular component of the
zone has been approximated by droplets ow instead of
approaching air velocity (Vp) has been given a maximum
lm ow. This approximation is presented schematically
value of 0.81.
in Fig. 3.
k f af V p0:2689 11
In In
vwi ; Twi ; m wi Out vpi ; Tpi ; m pi 1.5. Windbreak walls
vao > vai ; Taodb > Tadbi
Taowb > Taiwb Windbreak walls have been used for centuries to reduce
wind speed, to control heat and moisture transfer and to
improve climate and environment. However, only within
Air flow the last few decades have systematic studies considered
Film Droplet the aerodynamics and shelter mechanisms of shelterbelts
flow flow and windbreak walls. The primary eect of any windbreak
vai ; Taidb ; Taiwb wall is to reduce the wind speed. Throughout the current
paper, dierent windbreak walls have been examined.
vwo > vwi ; Two < Twi vpo = vpi ; Tpo < Tpi
m wo < m wi In The wall location with regard to the inlet of the NDWCT
m po < m pi
and the porosity of the wall are the main areas of interest.
Out Out
Fig. 4 shows the main features of the investigated wall in
Fig. 3. Approximation of the water ow through the ll zone. terms of its porosity.
2642 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648

200
p1 p 2
For a given water ow rate, inlet air wet bulb tempera-
kL = ture and relative humidity, the outlet water temperature
180 0 .5 V p2
160 has been plotted as a function of the inlet air dry bulb tem-
140
perature. The other reference values have been kept con-
stant as listed in Table 1. From Fig. 5, it can be seen that
120
1 2 the current CFD code has produced very close results to
kL

100
a1 those of the design curve. The dierence in outlet water
80 a2
temperature between the CFD and the design results is
60 <3% for the whole range of air temperatures, which is con-
=
a 2
40
a 1
sidered a satisfactory result. As a consequence, the current
20 code is utilised to investigate eect of dierent crosswind
0 conditions on the thermal performance of NDWCTs.
0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9
2. Results and discussion
Fig. 4. Pressure drop coecient of the windbreak wall in terms of the
walls porosity. Windbreak walls have been installed both inside and
outside the NDWCT. The dimensions and the geometry
of both the windbreak walls and the NDWCT are shown
Dierent from the solid wall, a porous wall is made of
in Fig. 6 and listed in Table 2 [25]. In the following sections,
series of parallel bars with some gaps between. Since the
the eects of wall location, porosity and wind direction on
bars can be easily replaced, it has been proposed as an eco-
the thermal performance of the NDWCT represented by
nomically viable windbreak [24]. The porous jump bound-
change in water temperature due to crosswind (DTwo) are
ary condition has been used to represent the porous
investigated.
windbreak walls as dened in the following equation:
 
l 1
Dp  U C qU 2 Dm 12
a 2 Outlet
The magnitude of the viscous loss term (rst term on the
RHS) is very small compared to the inertial loss term (sec-
ond term on the RHS) and has been neglected. By provid-
ing the wall thickness (Dm) and the pressure loss coecient
of the wall (C), the aerodynamic characteristics of the wall Outside wall
Inside wall
have been dened. H i x Db Hi x Hi

1.6. Validation

The validation process of the current code has been con-

ducted against the design conditions of the NDWCT and
has been detailed in another publication [14]. However, a y
brief summary of the validation process is repeated here.
x
z Inlet
306
Fig. 6. Location of windbreak walls with respect to the inlet of the
305 NDWCT.
304

303
Table 2
302 Summary of windbreak walls characteristics utilised in the current study
Two (K)

301 Case Windbreak wall characteristics

300
Inside Outside
299
a kL a kL
298 DESIGN
NO CD 1.00 0.0 1.00 0.0
297 CFD CD_1 1.00 0.0 0.00 1
296 CD_2 0.00 1 1.00 0.0
285 290 295 300 305 CD_3 0.00 1 0.00 1
CD_4 0.53 11.0 0.53 11.0
Tadb (K)
CD_5 0.53 11.0 0.6 5.6
CD_6 0.53 11.0 0.7 2.2
Fig. 5. Validation of the current code against the design conditions.
 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648 2643

2.1. Crosswind velocity

In evaporative cooling towers, both sensible and latent

heats are transferred from the hot water to the cooling
air. Since the latent heat of vaporization of the water at
atmospheric pressure is three orders of magnitude greater
than the specic heat, evaporation of even a small fraction
of the water produces signicant cooling. Therefore, the
eect of crosswind velocity on the temperature of water
owing out of the NDWCT is signicant as shown in
Fig. 7.
Fig. 7 shows an increment in the water temperature of
1.8 K as a result of a crosswind velocity of 7.5 m/s. It also
shows that for velocities higher than 7.5 m/s, the water
temperature decreases due to the air ow structure both
outside and inside the NDWCT. The eect of the external
air ow on the performance of the NDWCT is similar to
the eect on a NDDCT, which was detailed in previous
publications [15,16]. However, the internal air ow struc-
ture of the NDWCT is dierent from that of the NDDCT.
It can be seen from Fig. 8a that the air temperature
increases as it approaches the centre of the NDWCT. As
the air ows across the rain zone, it exchanges both heat
and mass with the hotter water droplets and loses momen-
tum due to the drag eect. The deeper the air ows into the
rain zone, the hotter, slower and more humid it becomes.
As a consequence, the air at the centre has the highest tem-
perature and humidity and the lowest velocity.
As the crosswind velocity starts increasing, the hot air Fig. 8. Air dry bulb temperature distribution inside the NDWCT at
spots start shifting toward the windward side of the tower crosswinds velocity of: (a) 0 m/s and (b) 10 m/s.
as shown in Fig. 8b. The increase in the air temperature at
the windward side is due to the low pressure zone generated
below the ll. As the air enters the NDWCT, due to the The low pressure zone has been found not to be the
area contraction, it accelerates and results in a low pressure dominant factor in increasing the water temperature. In
zone that reduces the amount of air owing upward. There- contrast, the non-uniformity in the water to air distribution
fore, a circulation zone emerges at the bottom of the resulting from the non-uniform air owing into the tower is
NDWCTs shell at the windward side, thus, reducing the the main factor in increasing the water temperature. Fig. 9
amount of heat and mass transferred and increasing the is an example of the non-uniformity in the air distribution
water temperature. at relatively low and high crosswind velocities.
When the air owing from the windward side collides
with the air owing from the leeward side, two circulation
2.5 zones emerge at a velocity of 2.5 m/s, as shown in Fig. 9a.
NOCD
Therefore, the air temperature increases, resulting in poor
CD _1
2.0 heat and mass transfer in the ll zone. This causes the
CD _2
CD _3
water droplet temperature to increase. At higher crosswind
1.5 velocity, such as 10 m/s, the circulation zones have disap-
Two (K)

peared from the centre of the ll inlet. In contrast, circula-

tion zones have emerged at both the windward and the
1.0
leeward sides of the NDWCT with higher air temperature,
as shown in Fig. 9b. The resulted air ow structure aects
0.5
the amount of heat and mass transfer in the ll zone, which
increases the outlet water temperature as shown earlier in
0.0 Fig. 7.
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Therefore, windbreak walls are investigated as a means
Ucw (m/s) to reduce the non-uniformity of the air ow in the rain
Fig. 7. The change in DTwo of the NDWCT under crosswinds due to zone and to enhance the air ow from the sides and lee-
walls location. ward sides of the NDWCT.
2644 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648

bance in the outlet water temperature, hence, the thermal

performance of the NDWCT.
Fig. 10 shows the temperature contours of the air at a
section taken at 5 m above ground level. The air dry bulb

Fig. 9. Air dry bulb temperature distribution at the inlet of the ll at

crosswinds velocity of: (a) 2.5 m/s and (b) 10 m/s.

2.2. Windbreak wall location

The location of the walls has a major eect on the per-

formance of the NDWCT, as can be seen from Fig. 7.
The introduction of solid walls in the rain zone has caused
a signicant degradation in the thermal performance of the
NDWCT at high crosswind velocities. In contrast, the
installation of solid walls outside the rain zone has
improved the thermal performance of the NDWCT. These
results are in contrast with the results reported by Al-
Waked and Behnia [16] for the NDDCT where all of the
three walls showed an improvement in the thermal perfor-
mance at all of the investigated crosswind velocities.
The dierences in the eect of the location of the walls
result from the existence of the rain zone within the
NDWCT. In NDDCTs, all the heat transfer occurs within
the heat exchanger, which is located inside the shell of the
tower. In NDWCTs, most of the heat and mass transfer
occurs in the spray and ll zones, which are located inside
the shell of the tower. However, a considerable portion of
the heat and mass transfer does occur in the rain zone for
the case of NDWCTs and does not exist at all for the case
of NDDCTs. As a consequence, any disturbance to the air Fig. 10. Contours of air dry bulb temperature in the rain zone at
ow patterns in the rain zone is translated into a distur- crosswind velocity of 10 m/s: (a) CD_1, (b) CD_2 and (c) CD_3.
 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648
temperature has increased to a maximum value of 302 K at
case CD_1 and up to 306.2 K at both of the CD_2 and
CD_3 cases. Therefore, the potential sensible cooling of
the air has decreased as it moved into the ll zone, which
has led to higher water temperature (Two). Furthermore,
hot temperature spots have emerged at the leeward wind
side of the rain zone at case CD_1 where no wall is installed
inside the NDWCT. At cases CD_2 and CD_3, the spots
have been shifted toward the centre of the rain zone imme-
diately behind the wall.
Based on these results, the use of solid impermeable
windbreak walls installed inside and outside the NDWCT
has proved to be the best option at crosswind velocities
lower than 7.5 m/s. However, these walls have been consid-
ered an obstacle to better cooling of the water at crosswind
velocities higher than 7.5 m/s. The use of solid walls
installed only outside of the NDWCT, on the other hand,
has led to a better thermal performance at velocities higher
than 7.5 m/s.
2.3. Windbreak wall porosity
The use of porous walls inside the NDWCT has the
advantage of reducing the negative eect of the solid walls
at high crosswind velocities by allowing the air to ow
through the wall toward the leeward side of the tower.
The eect of the walls porosity on Two is investigated in
this section for the same wall characteristics summarised
earlier in Table 2. The cases of walls installed both inside
and outside of the NDWCT are considered here.
In addition to the NO CD case and to the CD_3 case,
three more cases were considered in which the outside wall
porosity has been maintained constant while the inside
walls porosity has been varied as in cases CD_4, CD_5
and CD_6. The eect of the porosity on the thermal perfor-
mance of the NDWCT is shown in Fig. 11.
As expected, all of the three cases of porous walls have
showed an improvement in the thermal performance
depicted by a lower DTwo. Because of the porosity of the
wall, the air is allowed to penetrate the wall and to ow
2.5 NO CD
C D_3
2.0 C D_4
C D_5
C D_6
1.5
Two (K)
1.0
0.5
0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Ucw (m/s)
Fig. 11. The change in DTwo of the NDWCT under crosswinds due to
walls porosity.
2645
deeper into the rain zone toward the leeward side of the
NDWCT. As a consequence, the hot temperature spots
have been shifted from the centre of the rain zone behind
the wall toward the leeward side as shown in Fig. 12 for
case CD_4. This shift is caused by the contact of the hot
water droplets with the fresh cooling air owing through
the wall, which has resulted in a lower Two.
The eect of windbreak walls on the performance of the
NDWCT under investigation is strongly dependent on the
crosswind velocity. As shown in Fig. 11, at crosswind veloc-
ities lower than 6.5 m/s, the solid wall, case CD_3, has
resulted in the highest thermal performance of the NDWCT.
However, the wall with the highest porosity, CD_6, has
resulted in the lowest thermal performance at the same cross-
wind velocities. At crosswind velocities higher than 6.5 m/s,
the opposite eect is obtained. The highest thermal perfor-
mance of the NDWCT has been obtained from installing
the wall with the lowest investigated porosity inside the
NDWCT, case CD_6. On the other hand, the solid wall in
the rain zone has become a disadvantage in that it causes
degradation in the thermal performance of the NDWCT.
It can be concluded that improvement in the perfor-
mance due to the porosity of the wall is very dependent
on the crosswind velocity. As a consequence, more compre-
hensive studies are needed to report the eect of dierent
types of walls on the thermal performance of NDWCTs
as a function of crosswind velocity.
2.4. Crosswind direction
The sensitivity of the performance due to the porosity of
the wall and its dependence on the crosswind velocity mag-
nitude has raised the importance of the crosswind direc-
tion. For the case of an isolated NDWCT, two crosswind
directions (h = 0 and h = 45) have been considered to
investigate the dependence of the thermal performance on
windbreak walls.
Fig. 13 shows the change in the thermal performance of
the NDWCT for dierent walls at a crosswind direction of
16
Fig. 12. Contours of air dry bulb temperature in the rain zone for case
CD_4 at crosswind velocity of 10 m/s.
2646 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648

h = 45. All of the investigated walls show a positive eect 5 m/s, case CD_6 results in higher performance in compar-
on the thermal performance with one exception, case ison with case CD_1 at h = 0 and at h = 45. This is due to
CD_3_45, where 45 indicates the angle at which the cross- the air ow nature behind the walls as shown in Fig. 15.
wind approaches the NDWCT. The same degradation in
the thermal performance at case CD_3 is shown in
Fig. 11. For the remainder, the thermal performance of
the NDWCT is improved in a similar fashion to the
enhancement shown in Fig. 11 at h = 0.
By comparing the results obtained from Fig. 13 to those
obtained from Fig. 11, it can be concluded that windbreak
wall CD_6_45 produces the most favourable eect on the
thermal performance of the NDWCT among the investi-
gated porous walls. From Fig. 7, it has been shown that
installing the walls outside the rain zone is a promising
means to enhance the performance of the NDWCT. There-
fore, a comparison between case CD_1 and case CD_6 has
been conducted and the results are shown in Fig. 14.
Fig. 14 shows that case CD_6 results in the highest ther-
mal performance at all of the investigated high crosswind
velocities. However, the same wall provides the lowest per-
formance at crosswind velocities of a magnitude lower than
5 m/s, with case CD_1 in between. At velocities higher than

3.0
NO CD
C D_3 _4 5
2.5
C D_4 _4 5

2.0 C D_5 _4 5
C D_6 _4 5
Two (K)

1.5

1.0

0.5

0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Ucw (m/s)

Fig. 13. The change in DTwo of the NDWCT under crosswind direction
h = 45.

2.0 NO C D
C D_1
C D_6
1.5 C D_6 _4 5
Two (K)

1.0

0.5

0.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
Ucw (m/s)
Fig. 15. Contours of air dry bulb temperature contours in the rain zone
Fig. 14. Eect of the recommended windbreak walls on the thermal for the recommended windbreak walls: (a) CD_1, both h = 0 and h = 45,
performance of the NDWCT. (b) CD_12, h = 0 and (c) CD_12, h = 45.
 R. Al-Waked, M. Behnia / Energy Conversion and Management 48 (2007) 26382648
As the crosswind velocity increases, the air ow separa-
tion from the outside edge of the outside wall results in a
low pressure zone behind the wall. As a consequence, a
recirculation zone emerges at the side of the inlets of the
NDWCT as shown in Fig. 15. At case CD_1, the circula-
tion zone forces the air to ow from inside the rain zone
to outside the NDWCT. Therefore, less air ow into the
NDWCT has been observed, which results in a decrease
in the thermal transfer process inside the NDWCT. More-
over, the recirculation zones are enhanced by the relatively
high air ow velocity in the rain zone at the vicinity of the
wall.
By installing a porous wall both inside and outside the
NDWCT, the eect of the air ow separation at the outside
edge of the outside walls has been reduced. As can be seen
from Fig. 15, the lower air ow velocity inside the rain zone
at case CD_6 reduces the circulation behind the outside
wall. In addition to the lower velocity inside the rain zone,
the air ow through the porous outside wall showed a
major factor in reducing the circulation.
At a crosswind direction of h = 45, however, the air
ow velocity inside the rain zone at case CD_6_45 is higher
than at case CD_6 and lower than at case CD_1 as shown
in Fig. 15. As a consequence, a recirculation zone has
emerged near the side of the NDWCT inlet, which resulted
in higher temperature spots and an obstruction to the air
ow from the sides.
For the investigated windbreak walls, it can be con-
cluded that the windbreak wall (case CD_6) is the wall that
could reduce the negative eect of crosswind on the ther-
mal performance of the NDWCT. It is expected that a
windbreak wall consisting of controlled louvres installed
inside and outside the NDWCT could give very satisfying
results in terms of the thermal performance. At low cross-
wind velocities, the louvers should be closed. As the cross-
wind increases, the louvers should be opened. It is worth
mentioning that such a wall needs to be investigated thor-
oughly to get the best combination between the inside and
the outside louver opening.
3. Conclusion
The eect of windbreak walls on the thermal perfor-
mance of NDWCTs has been investigated numerically. It
has been found that crosswinds have a signicant eect
on the thermal performance of NDWCTs. At velocities
higher than 7.5 m/s, the crosswind has been found to
enhance the thermal performance of NDWCTs. At veloci-
ties lower than 7.5 m/s, however, crosswinds degrade the
thermal performance of NDWCTs.
Installing windbreak walls, on the other hand, has
resulted in enhancing the thermal performance of the
NDWCT. However, this performance has been found to
be dependent on the porosity and the location of the wind-
break. The highest thermal performance has resulted from
walls with porosity of 53% for the outside wall and poros-
ity of 70% for the inside wall.
2647
Dierences in the eects of windbreak walls on the per-
formance were found when similar walls were installed in
NDDCTs or NDWCTs. Extrapolating results obtained
from NDDCTs into NDWCTs was found to be inaccurate
and sometime misleading. Therefore, comprehensive stud-
ies are needed to examine any introduction to the
NDWCT in wet wind tunnel experiments or validated
numerical codes before applying the results to the full scale
NDWCT.
Finally, the installation of windbreak walls around the
inlet of the NDWCT is a simple means of reducing the
thermal performance losses due to crosswinds.
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