PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A BENCH TOP COOLING

TOWER

Introduction:

When a gas does not dissolve in the liquid in contact, the mass transfer involves vaporization and
condensation of liquid phase. The equilibrium consideration and simultaneous heat transfer are
important in humidification, dehumidification, and cooling of gases, and very importantly
cooling of liquids.

Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere.
Cooling towers uses the evaporation of water to remove process heat, and cool the working fluid
to near wet-bulb air temperature. Common applications include cooling the circulating water
used in oil refineries, chemical plants, power stations and central air conditioning of enclosed
space. The towers vary in size from roof-top units to vary large units.

Objective:

(1) To determine the performance of the cooling tower

(2) To determine the number and height of the transfer units.

(3) To calculate the theoretical evaporation rate.

Theory:

The operating diagram of the cooling tower is as follows:

HOT AIR OUT HOT WATER IN

COLD AIR IN COLD WATER OUT

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The equation of the operating line is

(1)

Where and are enthalpy of gas-vapor mixture per kg. of dry air.

L is flow rate of water and G is dry air flow rate.

is the specific heat of water from energy balance.

Q=G*( ) (2)

Where (3)

(4)

is latent heat and is humid heat capacity of air,

is the absolute humidity in kg of H2O vapor/kg of dry air

The number of transfer units

(5)

And the height of transfer unit is obtained from the equation

. (6)

This gives the overall mass transfer coefficient from the eqn

Where is molecular weight and P is is the pressure

The mean driving force is

The theoretical evaporation rate depends on the humidity of the air and its temperature. It is
given as volume flow rate of humid air (V)/humid volume of air ( ) where

And V is the velocity of humid air times the cross section of the exit port.

Mass Transfer Lab IIT Kgp

The and data is given as follows

30 32.5 35 37.5 40 42.2 45

kJ/kg 100 115 130 145 175 190 198

dry air

Experimental Set-up:

The setup comprises of a cooling tower, a water heater to generate hot water at different
temperatures, a pump and rotameter to regulate water into the tower and a fan to introduce air
into the tower. The water is distributed into the upward moving air by nozzles. Thermometers are
provided to measured the temperature of the inlet and outlet water, as well as to note the dry bulb
and wet bulb temperature of the entering and exit air. A hot wire anemometer measures the air
flow rate.

Experimental Procedure:

1. Put the heaters on so that water is heated to the required temperature.

2. After the conditions have stabilized, introduce water and record its flow rate.
3. Introduce air, record the flow rate, and record the dry and wet bulb temperature of the
entering and exit air.
4. At regular intervals over a measured period of time, say 5 minutes, all temperatures and
flow rate should be noted and the mean values entered in the notebook.
5. The experiments are repeated for different flow rates, and temperatures of the inlet water.
Record the height of packing, air velocity at the exit port and diameter of port. After
starting the experiment note the various flow rates and temperatures of the entering and
exit streams.

Data Analysis:

Calculate the number and height of transfer unit, the overall mass transfer coefficient and the
theoretical evaporation rate for all the test runs.

Mass Transfer Lab IIT Kgp