Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t
Article history: The thermal performance capacity of a wet cooling tower is dominated by weather conditions, partic-
Received 11 October 2010 ularly ambient wet-bulb temperature. In this paper, the tower performance was predicted by a simplied
Accepted 11 January 2012 model which was characterized by specication of a mass evaporation rate equation. The purpose of this
Available online 21 January 2012
study was to present a calculation that was accurate and simple to implement, and could be applied to
evaluate acceptance tests for new towers, to monitor changes in tower performance as an aid in planning
Keywords:
maintenance, and to predict tower performance under changed operating conditions. The results were
Cooling tower thermal performance
validated and showed good agreement with experimental measurements. The results were also pre-
capability
Cooling tower analysis
sented in simple formats that were easy to use and understand. These allowed reduction of test data and
Merkel theory comparison of test results to design data. The method held a practical advantage for predicted tower
Predicting cooling tower performance thermal performance capability to which it was best suited when both ow rate and temperature of inlet
Performance curve water were near design conditions since it required neither the measurement of air ow rate nor the
calculation of tower characteristic hmass A=L. The expected results of this study will make it possible to
incorporate cooling tower design and simulation to evaluate and optimize the thermal performance of
power plants for example.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction correctly with the design conditions that were instructed according
to the CTI cooling tower acceptance test code [1]. Incidentally, these
Cooling towers have many applications in the elds of air- data are not only useful in the determination of thermal capacity of
conditioning, refrigeration and power plants. In the case of power the tower according to design conditions during the test run period
generation plants or sugar mill plants, the cooling tower require- but can also be used to determine the operating characteristics in
ments are relatively large and it has been the practice in recent the change in atmospheric conditions, especially temperatures.
years especially in Thailand to fabricate increasingly larger cooling Notable examples of techniques based on this approach are the
towers. For large towers or towers with special requirements that work of Fujita and Tezuka [3], Peterson and Backer [4] and Lucas
are not Cooling Technology Institute (CTI) certied, in-situ testing is et al. [5]. They demonstrated that the cooling tower characteristic
the only way to guarantee that the towers will perform as required. curve predicted from the Merkel principle is simple in terms of
For this purpose, it is quite common to use the Merkel theory such formulation and can provide reliable estimate of cooling tower
as that of CTI [1] or ASME [2] for the computation of tower char- performance at off-design. By this method, the tower operating
acteristic (hmass A=L) or Number of Transfer Units (NTU). The prob- conditions are determined directly using the slope of the cooling
lems usually encountered in analysis of cooling towers for large tower characteristic curve.
process plants included measurement of many test data with high Even though the method has been applied to predict the overall
accuracy instruments, analysis of test data and comparison of test thermal evaluation of cooling towers, there are some concerns
results to design point. This is an expensive and time-consuming about simplifying assumptions of the Merkel theory such as the
process that should be undertaken only after due consideration. neglecting of the reduction of waterow rate by evaporation and
The thermal capacity of a cooling tower is obtained by per- the saturated water vapor (or 100% relative humidity) of air at the
forming the test. The test data should be evaluated by comparing tower exit. The method tends to underestimate the heat rejected by
the cooling tower but can be used if only the water outlet
temperature is of importance [6]. Kloppers and Krger also
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 662 470 9338; fax: 662 470 9111. proposed a technique to get accurate prediction by including the
E-mail address: wanchai.asv@kmutt.ac.th (W. Asvapoositkul). water loss due to evaporation in the energy equation. The effect of
1359-4311/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2012.01.025
W. Asvapoositkul, S. Treeutok / Applied Thermal Engineering 38 (2012) 160e167 161
evaporation causes the water ow rate to decrease from inlet to equivalent of a mass transfer resulting from the evaporation of
outlet; as a result, the ratio of water-to-air (L/G) varies through the a portion of the circulating water. The energy balance on the water
tower. These two effects (evaporation loss and variable L/G) were side in terms of heat and mass transfer coefcients, hconv and hmass
investigated by Baker and Shryock [7]. For calculation of counter respectively, is
ow cooling tower with evaporation loss, a constant L/G ratio
results in a 4.4% increase in NTU at a 22 C range. And evaporation Ldhfw hconv Tsw Ta dA hmass usw ua hgw dA (4)
loss and varied L/G ratios result in a 1.34% increase in NTU at the
The mass balance on the air side of the evaporated water mass is
degree range.
The purpose of this study was to apply the cooling tower perfor- Gdua hmass usw ua dA (5)
mance characteristics to determine the operating characteristics for
the cooling tower being considered. The study was also to determine if The simultaneous heat and mass transfer takes place and can be
the performance curves could be used to evaluate thermal perfor- expressed by substituting (4) and (5) into (3) and through rear-
mance of the cooling tower without measurement of air ow rate and rangement we get,
the calculation of hmass A=L. And tower capacity was more accurately
Gdha hconv Tsw Ta dA hmass usw ua hgw dA (6)
expressed in terms of the ratio of water-to-air loading (L/G) that
included water evaporation and unsaturated air leaving the tower.
dG 0 (1)
Mass balance for water
dL G dua (2)
Energy balance
hmass dA d hfw
(10)
L hsw ha Fig. 3. Cooling tower demand curve.
Integrating
hmassA/L value at design conditions. An empirical equation useful
Zh2 ZT2
hmass A dhfw cdTfw for predicting hmassA/L at off-design conditions is [8]:
(11)
L hsw ha hsw ha n
h1 T1 hmass A L
c (12)
L G
This is known as the Merkel equation. Integration for equation
(11) is done by using Tchebyshevs method which gives a high Values of c and n are determined from performance data
degree of accuracy in the case of large cooling ranges as suggested provided by manufacturers. Typical values of n are in the range of
by CTI [1]. 0.4 < n < 0.6 [9]. If a typical value of n is assumed, the value of c can
be determined from L and G at nominal design conditions. Once c
2.1. Tower characteristics and n are known for a particular cooling tower, the cooling tower
performance can be predicted at any operating condition given the
The tower characteristics (hmassA/L) are a dimensionless variable water inlet temperature Tw,i, the ambient air wet-bulb temperature
which can be determined by integrated value of equation (11) at Twb, and the ow rates L and G. The tower characteristic hmass A=L
design condition. This value is based on the equipments design can then be plotted against varying (L/G) ratio, and this gives
requirements or is a measure of the difculty of the task [8]. In a measure of the ability of the tower to effect the transfer such as
cooling tower design practice, it is referred to as an accepted shown in Fig. 2.
concept of cooling tower performance [1,2]. For the given cooling
tower, its value depends on the ratio of water-to-air loading (L/G). 2.2. Cooling demand curves
And the dimensionless variable, (L/G), can be determined from the
known waterow and known air ow. The hmassA/L value of a tower The water temperature and air temperature or enthalpy are
operating at off-design conditions will not be the same as the being changed along the tower and the Merkel relation can only be
applied to a small element of the heat transfer surface. Referring to
Fig. 2. Cooling tower characteristic curve with design point and test point. Fig. 4. Tower demand and characteristic curve.
W. Asvapoositkul, S. Treeutok / Applied Thermal Engineering 38 (2012) 160e167 163
Table 1
Cooling tower design condition.
Design condition
Water loading 60 L/min-m2
Hot water temp. (Tw,i) 38.5 C
Cold water temp. (Tw,o) 33.5 C
Inlet wet-bulb temp. (Twb,i) 29 C
Inlet dry bulb temp. (Tdb,i) 36 C
Total fan driver power 185 w
Barometric press. 1.0013 bar
Liquid to gas ratio (L/G)d 1.163
Fig. 5. Flow diagram for the cooling tower simulation calculation.
164 W. Asvapoositkul, S. Treeutok / Applied Thermal Engineering 38 (2012) 160e167
Table 2 33.0
Specications of the measuring devices.
Twb,o predicted ( oC )
Ambient wet/dry Temp. RTD temperature probe 0.8 C 0.1 C
Inlet/outlet air velocity Vane Anemometer 2% 0.1 m/s 32.0
Fan power Multi-meter 2% 1 V, 0.1 A
fore, the air discharge is at its wet-bulb. This is based on Merkel -2%
Model.
31.0
The CTI code determines the test value of (L/G)t from the average
water ow rate and fan driver output power at the time of test. Its
value is calculated from [1]:
30.5
1 1 30.5 31.0 31.5 32.0 32.5 33.0
L L Lt P d 3 rt 3 wt Twb,o exper. ( oC )
(17)
G t G d Ld Pt rd wd
Fig. 8. Comparison of wet-bulb temp. at cooling tower exit between the experiment
data and the predicted value from equation (16).
3. Experiments
8 +5%CAPACITY
100%CAPACITY
7 -5%CAPACITY
Range ( oC )
6
3
18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34
wet-bulbe temp. ( oC )
Fig. 9. Comparison of L/G between the experiment data and the predicted value from
Fig. 11. Cooling tower evaluations at inlet water temp. of 38.5 C.
test values of discharged air properties (TDA), test values of discharged air properties
without evaporation (TWE) and test fan driver output power (TFD).
Fig. 10. Comparison of hmassA/L calculated from experiment data L/G and predicted L/G
from test values of discharged air properties (TDA), test values of discharged air
properties without evaporation (TWE) and test fan driver output power (TFD). Fig. 12. Predicted inlet water temp. at 29 C entering wet-bulb temp. and 60% RH.
166 W. Asvapoositkul, S. Treeutok / Applied Thermal Engineering 38 (2012) 160e167
Fig. 13. Predicted inlet water temp. for 105% of design water circulation. Fig. 15. Predicted inlet water temp. for 95% of design water circulation.
determined from test values of discharged air properties (TDA) (12). The values of n and c were found to be 0.531 and 0.764,
while that from equation (16) were determined from test values of respectively.
discharged air properties without evaporation (TWE) and that from
equation (17) were determined from test fan driver output power
5. Evaluation of tower performance
(TFD). The linear regression (r2) of the predicted values was ranked
in ascending order as follows: TWE, TFD and TDA with the values of
In evaluating cooling tower thermal capacity, the design
0.657, 0.893 and 0.936, respectively.
conditions of the tower must be available (either from the manu-
Fig. 10 presented the calculated values of tower characteristics
facturer or test data). In this illustration, the tower characteristic is
(hmassA/L) obtained with L/G from experiments, TDA, TWE and TFD.
shown in Fig. 2. Its operating characteristics were predicted as
The difference among the data indicated the inuence of L/G where
described in section 2.3.
result from TDA showed excellent agreement with hmassA/L ob-
With properly selected demand curves (preferably with given
tained from the experiment value of L/G. The linear regression (r2)
constant inlet water temperature) and subject to certain L/G (pref-
of the predicted values from TDA, TFD and TWE was 0.980, 0.974
erably with given tower capacity 5%) the method could be
and 0.876, respectively. The deviation was less than 2% therefore
employed to meet a wide range of service requirements. Fig. 11
the methods were understood to be suitable since percent errors of
illustrates evaluation cooling tower capacity curves for inlet water
about 5%e10% always go with the heat balance in performance
temperature, Tw,i 38.5 C; this could be expanded to other inlet
tests [3].
water temperature if desired. Therefore, the operator of such a cooling
The values from TDA were plotted for the tower characteristic
tower can determine the tower capability from the graph as shown in
curve, shown in Fig. 2, at the design condition of Twb 29 C,
Fig. 11. In considering other inlet water temperature with varying Twb
and L/G 1.163. The line was t to the model given in equation
at water ow rate of 5% of the design ow rate, see Figs. 12e15.
The cooling tower capacity illustration in Fig. 11 was based on the
assumption that the test conditions of the water ow rate and inlet
water temperature were near design conditions. The method has an
advantage in that neither the measurement of air ow rate nor the
calculation of hmassA/L was required. This method was proposed by
Fujita and Tezuka [3]. For practical use, inlet water temperatures are
within 2 C, water ow rates are within 5% and inlet wet-bulb
temperatures are within 3 C/-17 C from the design conditions [3].
6. Conclusions