Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Discrete model-based operation of cooling tower based

on statistical analysis
Jian-Guo Wang a, Shyan-Shu Shieh b,⇑, Shi-Shang Jang c,⇑, Chan-Wei Wu d
a
School of Mechatronical Engineering and Automation, Shanghai University, Shanghai Key Lab of Power Station Automation Technology, Shanghai 200072, China
b
Department of Occupational Safety and Health, Chang Jung Christian University, Tainan 71101, Taiwan
c
Department of Chemical Engineering, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsin-Chu 30013, Taiwan
d
Energy & Air Pollution Control Section, New Materials R&D Department, China Steel Corporation, Kaohsiung 81233, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This study is aimed to utilize the operation data to build a physical-meaningful and precise-enough
Received 26 December 2012 model to assist the operation of a cooling tower. To do so, this work introduces a dimensionless index,
Accepted 19 April 2013 which can describe the cooling capability of a cooling tower in terms of effective power utilization. In
Available online 24 May 2013
the first phase of this study, principal component analysis, one of factor analysis methods, is used to
investigate effects of ambient air temperature and relative humidity on the cooling capability of a cooling
Keywords: tower. Based on the proposed cooling capability index, the operation data are partitioned into different
Statistical analysis
groups by the fuzzy c-mean clustering algorithm. The resulted groups are distinctly categorized by the
Cooling capability index
Model-based operation
conditions of ambient air temperature and relative humidity. In the second phase of the study, data
Cooling tower within the same mode of a set of fans are partitioned by the fuzzy c-mean clustering algorithm. The
Energy conservation resulted groups of data are then modeled by linear regression. The acquired multiple models are highly
accurate in predicting the output temperature of cooling water from the cooling tower. The acquired
models assist the operator to accurately select the proper fan mode when process conditions, e.g., cooling
loading, or environment conditions, e.g., ambient air temperature, change. It results in electricity saving.
This study is concluded by the presentation of a discrete model-based approach to determine the fan
mode. The application to a real cooling tower in an iron and steel plant is promising in saving electricity
consumed by the fan set.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The cooling tower is an important unit in many industrial pro-
cesses, such as: power generation systems, chemical and petro-
chemical plants, refrigeration and air-conditioning systems, etc. It
dissipates the process heat absorbed from hot streams into the
environment by virtue of mass and heat transfer between cooling
water and ambient air at the expense of electrical energy con-
sumed to drive the fan set. The operation of cooling water has been
troubled by the large system time and strict prohibition of no over-
shoot in some plants. Without the accurate-enough-model, the
control of the cooling water is done manually and conservatively
at the expense of energy wastefulness. This study is aimed to con-
serve energy consumption by improving the operation of a typical
cooling tower serving in the iron and steel plant via the building of
a good model. A typical iron and steel plant usually has tens of
cooling tower units.
⇑ Corresponding authors. Fax: +886 3 571 5408.
E-mail addresses: sss@mail.cjcu.edu.tw (S.-S. Shieh), ssjang@mx.nthu.edu.tw
(S.-S. Jang).
The conceptual design of the cooling tower can be traced back
to Merkel’s work [1], which firstly developed a theory for the ther-
mal calculation with some simplifying assumptions. Afterward,
effectiveness-NTU method [2] and Poppe method [3] were pro-
posed to improve Merkel’s approximations. Kloppers and Kröger
[4] presented a comprehensive review on those works. In the last
decade, based on the rapid development of software simulation,
researchers studied the cooling tower design in more details [5–
11], including the effect of special fill material and fill style to cool-
ing performance [6,8–10].
Besides design work, performance assessment is another
important issue in the research of the cooling tower. In general,
CTI (cooling tower institute) standard specification [12] is recog-
nized as a standard method to evaluate the performance of cool-
ing tower. In addition, some performance assessment methods
were presented, namely, effectiveness-NTU based analysis [13],
exergy analysis [14], software simulation [15,16], Poppe equation
based analysis [17,18], or fouling model development [19]. Con-
sidering many long-in-service cooling towers whose operation
conditions are far beyond the test conditions set by CTI method,
such as ambient air conditions, entrance temperature of cooling

0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.04.025
 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233
Nomenclature
Tcw,in inlet water temperature of cooling tower (°C)
Tcw,out outlet water temperature of cooling tower (°C)
Fcw water mass flow rate of cooling tower (103 kg/h)
T Dair;in ambient air temperature, i.e., dry-bulb temperature of
inlet air to the cooling tower (°C)
water, the authors presented a model-based assessment ap-
proach to investigate the on-line performance of a cooling tower
[20].
Besides design and performance assessment, some researches
pay attention to the issue of optimal operation for a cooling tower
[21,22]. Based on the mass/energy conservation laws and mass/
heat transfer equations, CFD (computational fluid dynamics) mod-
els were developed to simulate the cooling tower operation
[16,23]. However, differences between the modeling world and
the actual operations keep the simulation models from being uti-
lized in the real-time operation. In general, the model based on
the actual process data can reflect the actual process, but conven-
tional linear model is not competent for the nonlinear and time-
varying characteristic of a cooling tower. Artificial neural networks
and bee colony algorithm were used for modeling cooling tower
[24–27], but the results were beyond understanding and hardly
provided any physical knowledge for reference. Recently, a linear
multi-model based approach is proposed by the authors with an
automatic clustering approach [28].
Although many authors have studied cooling tower operations
and optimization, following two issues have not been addressed:
(i) A data driven, physically meaningful model that is clear to
the operators has not been reported.
(ii) Application of a model based control to a real plant has not
been addressed.
In this work, a dimensionless index is proposed to describe the
cooling capability of a cooling tower in terms of unit consumed
electricity by the fan driver. Taking the cooling capability index
as dependent variables, the statistical analysis methods such as
principal component analysis and correlation analysis are used
to reveal the roles of ambient air temperature and relative
humidity. In this study, ambient air temperature refers to dry-
bulb temperature of inlet air to the cooling tower. Then, it is
found that operating data with same fan operating mode can be
categorized into two distinct groups by fuzzy c-mean clustering
(FCM) algorithm and the clustering results are analyzed to reveal
physical meaning. The partitioned groups are subsequently used
to build a set of multiple linear models. A discrete model-based
approach for selecting fan mode is presented and the implemen-
tation of the proposed optimal operation is demonstrated by the
studied cooling tower.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. The next section
describes the studied system. In Section 3, a cooling capability in-
dex is defined and statistical analysis methods are utilized to
investigate the effect of ambient air temperature and relative
humidity on the cooling capability of a cooling tower. Fuzzy c-
mean clustering (FCM) algorithm is used to categorize operating
data into groups and the characteristics of the cooling tower are
modeled by multiple model method in Section 4. The implementa-
tion of the proposed model-based operation for setting fan mode is
demonstrated in Section 5. Some remarks with a summary are con-
cluded in the last section.
227
M Dair mass flow rate of dry air (kg/h)
RHair,in relative humidity of inlet air to the cooling tower (%)
Wfan cooling tower fan power (kW)
cct cooling capability index
Cp Specific heat of water at constant pressure (kJ/(kg °C))
2. System background description
A pump draws water and sends it to the top of the fill and water
is evenly sprayed over the cooling tower fill, while ambient air is
pulled into the tower from wall sides by fans. After absorbing heat
from the hot water stream, the air stream is expelled through the
top of the cooling tower. As a result of rejecting heat to the air
stream, temperature of the water stream drops, and then, air tem-
perature rises.
The studied subject is one of cooling towers in a large iron
and steel plant in Taiwan. Cooling water from the studied unit
provides service for tandem cold mill and continuous annealing
line. The cooling tower unit has three fans. Each fan has 3
operating modes, namely, closed, low speed and high speed.
The fan set usually operates in one of the following seven
modes from low to high level: three closed (C3_L0_H0), two
closed and one low-speed (C2_L1_H0), one closed and two
low-speed (C1_L2_H0), three low-speed (C0_L3_H0), two low-
speed and one high-speed (C0_L2_H1), one low-speed and
two high-speed (C0_L1_H2), three high-speed (C0_L0_H3). The
operation target is to not allow temperature of outlet water
to exceed 33.5 °C.
The operation variables used in this cross-flow induced draft
tower can be partitioned into two parts, i.e., (1) cooling water re-
lated: water mass flow rate Fcw, inlet water temperature Tcw,in
and outlet water temperature Tcw,out; (2) ambient air related: dry
bulb temperature of inlet air T Dair;in , relative humidity of inlet air
RHair,in, mass flow rate of dry air M Dair and fan power of cooling
tower Wfan.
Fig. 1 shows historical data of some important variables. The
data of 60,250 samples used in this study were collected within
7 months from March, 2011, and December 2011 to May, 2012.
The operating data are taken every 5 min. After removing the
abnormal or erroneous samples, 60,000 samples remain.
Cooling duty of cooling water varies along with change of pro-
duction phase. Operators tend to keep the outlet temperature of
cooling water much lower than the targeted temperature in order
to make sure that even when production phase changes to cause
high cooling duty demand, the cooling water temperature would
not exceed the target. As a result, the operation of the cooling
tower usually ends up with the over consumption of electrical en-
ergy. The objective of this paper is to investigate how to perform
a tight temperature control in operating the cooling tower and
fulfill the need of the process ends for the cooling water. The en-
ergy consumption of the cooling unit is hence significantly
reduced.
3. Statistical analysis of cooling capability
In this section, principal component analysis (PCA) and fuzzy c-
mean clustering (FCM), are utilized to examine the effect of ambi-
ent air temperature and its relative humidity on the cooling capa-
bility of the studied cooling tower.
228 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233

6000

cw
4000

F 2000
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

40
cw,in

30
T

20
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

40
cw,out

30
T

20
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

50
Tair,in
D

0
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

100
air,in

50
RH

0
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000

300
Wfan

200
100
0
0 10000 20000 30000 40000 50000 60000
Data number

Fig. 1. Historical data of main operation variables at the sampling interval of 5 min.

3.1. PCA analysis for ambient air and cooling capability 3

In order to precisely describe the cooling capability in terms

of unit energy consumption, the following dimensionless index 2
is defined as the ratio of rejected thermal energy from cooling
water to consumed electric energy by the fan driver. The dimen- 1
sionless cooling capability index is termed as cct and defined as
follows:
T air,in

0
D

ðT cw;in  T cw;out ÞF cw C P
cct ¼ ð1Þ
W fan
-1
At the beginning of this study, correlation analysis was straightfor-
wardly conducted on the relationship between the cooling capabil-
ity index cct and the plain properties of ambient air, i.e., T Dair;in and -2
RHair,in, in the cooling tower operation. It resulted in unimpressive
2nd PC 1st PC
19.6% of R2 between cct and T Dair;in , and 7.0% of R2 between cct and -3
RHair,in. -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Aimed to further explore the hidden factors in the data, prin- RHair,in
cipal component analysis (PCA) was applied to treat the data
regarding ambient air properties. Two principal components were Fig. 2. The first and second PC of T Dair;in and RHair,in.
obtained. The 1st PC scores 68% while the 2nd PC 32%. Correlation
analysis was then conducted to investigate the relationship be-
tween the cooling capability index cct and the two PCs. It turned
out with an impressive 32.1% of R2 between cct and 2nd PC. Fig. 2
shows the results of PCA. It means that the 1st PC could explain Table 1
Correlation analysis results for cct and other variables.
68% of variations of the data regarding T Dair;in and RHair,in while the
2nd PC accounts for the remained 32%. Table 1 summarizes cor- Variable R2 (%)
relation analysis results. The above analysis reveals that the major TD 19.6
air;in
variation of data is along the line of from the points of high T Dair;in , RHair,in 7.0
and low RHair,in to the points of low T Dair;in , and high RHair,in, but Tcw,in 1.5
what matters on the cooling capability of a cooling tower opera- DTcw 3.3
1st PC 6.2
tion is the linear combination of low T Dair;in , and low RHair,in, which
2nd PC 32.1
is 2nd PC.
 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233 229

3.2. FCM analysis for data of different levels of cooling capability responding to the weather change. Lack of physical knowledge,
operators tend to be conservative in coping with the requirement
With the knowledge acquired in the above section, this study of keeping outlet cooling tower temperature below the certain
further investigate what the roles of ambient air temperature point demanded by the users. As a result, operators would ineffi-
and relative humidity play on the cooling capability of the cooling ciently set all fans in high mode in the hot humid summer days
tower by conducting Fuzzy c-mean clustering (FCM) on the opera- while wastefully start many fans in the cold dry winter days. The
tion data. local weather has distinctive characteristic in temperature differ-
Fuzzy c-mean clustering is based on the minimization of dis- ence between summer and winter, but less distinguishable in
tances between data points and the prototype of cluster centers humidity conditions. The 1st PC in Fig. 2 reflects the above-men-
[29]. For the purpose of minimization, the following cost function tioned characteristics. With those data, Fig. 3 shows a distorted line
is used: with both opposite ends, instead of being a straight line as shown
by the 2nd PC in Fig. 2.
X
N X
c
J FCM ðU; V; UÞ ¼ u2ik k/ðkÞ  v i k2 ð2Þ
k¼1 i¼1 4. Discrete model-based operation of cooling tower

where N is the number of all the data points, c is the given cluster
number,
n o
P P
U ¼ uik 2 ½0; 1j ci¼1 uik ¼ 1; Nk¼1 uik > 0; k ¼ 1; . . . ; N; i ¼ 1; . . . ; c
is a membership matrix, V = {v1, . . . , vc} is a cluster center set. For a
given cluster number, the objective function is minimized by an
alternating optimization algorithm [30].
The FCM partitioning was made based on the cooling capability
level, i.e., cct After several trials, it was found that the partitioning
of eight groups provided the best and clear results. The eight clus-
tering central points within obtained groups of data are plotted in
Fig. 3. With descending order, eight cooling capability levels are
denoted as from cct,1 to cct,8. The value inside the parenthesis is
the dimensionless cooling capability index. It is found that the
cooling tower has the high cooling capability in the area with
low temperature and low humidity ðT Dair;in < 22:5  C;
RHair;in < 74:5%Þ while low cooling capability groups appear in
the opposite direction. With the increase of temperature and
humidity, the cooling capability becomes poor. The cooling capa-
bility in the highest group, i.e., 475 is four times of that in the low-
est level, 116.
The scattering plot of these eight center points has the same
trend as what 2nd PC shows in Fig. 2. Both figures reflect the same
phenomenon in physics. The ambient air with less saturated mois-
ture and lower temperature a cooling tower bring in is more capa-
ble to absorb the heat from cooling water. In other words, the
temperature difference between inlet cooling water and ambient
air as well as the less saturation condition are the two major driv-
ing forces to effectively reject the heat from cooling water. During
the real operation, operators may not timely change the fan mode
28
8(116)
27
5(197)
6(174)
26 7(151)
25
4(232)
air,in
Imbedded with the knowledge revealed in the previous sec-
tions, the model-based operation of the cooling tower will be de-
scribed and demonstrated in this section. Ambient air
temperature and relative humidity have been proved to be corre-
lated to the cooling capability index in the last section. Subse-
quently, it is reasonably supposed that the fan operating mode
should be associated with the cooling capability index. After cate-
gorizing the data by the fan operating mode and calculating their
average values of air temperature, relative humidity and cooling
capability index, it is found that each fan operating mode had dis-
tinct averaged air temperature and cooling capability index, but
indistinguishable relative humidity. By investigating the data
groups partitioned by fan operating mode, the same characteristics
can be found as those by FCM method. Therefore, this study
decided to build the multiple models by partitioning the data
based the fan operating mode. In this way, it would be easy to build
the models and then implement the model-based approach in real
operation.
4.1. FCM analysis
According to the previously described seven fan operating
modes, denoted with corresponding fan power as Wfan,1 to Wfan,7,
all the operation data are divided into seven groups and every data
has five variables, namely ambient air temperature T Dair;in , its rela-
tive humidity RHair,in, inlet water temperature Tcw,in and water
mass flow rate Fcw and fan operating mode Wfan. Within each
group, fuzzy c-mean clustering (FCM) is conducted on the data
with cluster number, c set as 2. The data in the resulted partitioned
groups in every one of seven fan operating modes are distinctly
scattered in the Cartesian coordinates of ambient air temperature
T Dair;in and relative humidity, RHair,in.
Taking the examples of two fan operating modes, C3_L0_H0 and
C1_L2_H0, the data with degree of membership u1k and u2k larger
than 70% are plotted as shown in Figs. 4 and 5. It is found that
the data within the same fan operating mode are divided distinctly
into two groups, one with high temperature and low humidity, and
the other with low temperature and high humidity. It reflects the

local weather characteristics imbedded in the data.

TD

24
3(266) 4.2. Cooling tower modeling
23
From the mass and energy conservative laws, outlet tempera-
2(313)
22 ture of cooling water Tcw,out is known to be the function of inlet
cooling water temperature Tcw,in, cooling water flow rate Fcw, ambi-
21
1(475) ent air temperature T Dair;in , relative humidity RHair,in and air flow rate
73 73.5 74 74.5 75 75.5 76 76.5 77 77.5 MDair . Because the data are partitioned by their fan operating mode,
RHair,in 7 in this case, the air flow rate, being the same within each group of
data, is not treated as variable. Since two clusters are made by FCM
Fig. 3. Clustering centers of eight groups with different cooling capability level. in each fan operating mode, the total number of the multiple mod-
230 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233

32

30 Group1
Group2
28

26

24
Tair,in 22
D

20

18

16

14

12
40 50 60 70 80 90 100
RH (%)
air,in

Fig. 4. Clustering result with fan operating mode C3_L0_H0.

32

30 Group1
Group2
28

26

24
Tair,in

22
D

20

18

16

14
40 50 60 70 80 90 100
RH (%)
air,in

Fig. 5. Clustering result with fan operating mode C1_L2_H0.

els is 14 in this case. They are constructed by the following build two local models in the formats of linear equations. The de-
equations. tailed procedures of the FCM-based multiple-model method can be
referred to the authors’article [31]. The rest of the sampled data
X
2
Tb m qi ð/ðkÞÞ  ^f i ðXðkÞÞ ðm ¼ 1; . . . ; 7Þ were used to test the prediction accuracy with two indexes,
cw;out ðkÞ ¼ ð3Þ
i¼1 namely mean square error (MSE) and R2 as shown below:

where /ðkÞ ¼ ½F cw ðkÞ; T cw;in ðkÞ; T Dair;in ðkÞ; RHair;in ðkÞ, the cluster num- 1X N
MSE ¼ ðT cw;out ðkÞ  Tb cw;out ðkÞÞ2 ð5Þ
ber c = 2, m indicates the different fan operating mode, k is the time N k¼1
step with interval of 5 min and
  PN
T ðT cw;out ðkÞ  Tb cw;out ðkÞÞ2
exp  ð/ðkÞv i ÞS2ð/ðkÞv i Þ R2 ¼ 1  Pk¼1
N 2
ð6Þ
qi ð/ðkÞÞ ¼ P 
i
 ð4Þ k¼1 ðT cw;out ðkÞ  T cw;out ðkÞÞ
2 ð/ðkÞv i ÞT ð/ðkÞv i Þ
i¼1 exp  S 2 The prediction capability of the acquired multiple models are dem-
i
onstrated in the cases of fan operating mode C3_L0_H0 and
where vi (i = 1, 2) is the cluster center, which is obtained by the min- C1_L2_H0. Both of Figs. 6 and 7 show the model prediction results.
imization of the cost function shown in Eq. (2), and Si is the width of Fig. 6 is for the case of fan operation mode C3_L0_H0 while Fig. 7 for
Gaussian function. For the case of cluster number c = 2, C1_L2_H0. Both figures consist of a comprehensive picture showing
qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi the prediction result of the testing set of 7000 points, and a close-up
s1 ¼ s2 ¼ ðv 1  v 2 Þðv 1  v 2 ÞT . XðkÞ ¼ ½1; /ðkÞ and
picture showing that of 1000 points. They illustrate that the outlet
^f ðXðkÞÞ ¼ XðkÞ  b , and b = [b , b , b , b , b ]T are coefficients of temperatures of cooling water are well fitted by the models.
i i i,0 i,1 i,2 i,3 i,4
the ith local model. The results of prediction accuracy for all seven fan operating
Among 60,000 samples, seven batches of 500 samples randomly modes are summarized in Table 2. All of the operating modes share
were taken from them for each fan operating mode. The 500 sam- the similar prediction accuracy. It means that the proposed ap-
ples were partitioned into two groups by FCM method and used to proach is stable and reliable in the whole range of the operation.
 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233 231

35
Measured
Predicted
30

Tcw,out
25

20
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
Data number (k)
35
Measured
Predicted
30
cw,out
T

25

20
1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000
Data number (k)

Fig. 6. Prediction result of the fan operating mode C3_L0_H0.

35
Measured
Predicted
Tcw,out

30

25
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000
Data number (k)

35
Measured
Predicted
Tcw,out

30

25
1000 1100 1200 1300 1400 1500 1600 1700 1800 1900 2000
Data number (k)

Fig. 7. Prediction result of the fan operating mode C1_L2_H0.

Table 2 Table 3
Prediction accuracy in seven fan modes. Comparison among three different partitioning ways.
Fan operating Number of Number of Prediction Prediction Prediction MSE Prediction R2 (%)
mode all data modeling data MSE R2 (%)
c=5 0.4263 64.24
C3_L0_H0 6077 500 0.205 74.81 c = 14 0.3145 70.62
C2_L1_H0 11401 500 0.188 75.56 Combination way in this study 0.2050 73.65
C1_L2_H0 12803 500 0.175 74.72
C0_L3_H0 14049 500 0.151 76.32
C0_L2_H1 7251 500 0.153 76.47
C0_L1_H2 6922 500 0.161 73.65 14 is the total model number of the proposed approach in this
C0_L0_H3 1497 500 0.101 74.15
study. To make the comparison fair, both cases randomly take
3500 samples from all 60,000 data to build multiple models based
on FCM clustering.
The proposed approach of partitioning the data shown above is the Table 3 summarizes the comparisons of both prediction in-
combination way based on knowledge and FCM. The knowledge of dexes among three ways. Because MSE tells the absolute preci-
idea is inspired by physical sense and verified by statistical sion of the prediction capability, it is commonly used as an
analysis. index to address the accuracy of the model for prediction. In
To justify the proposed way of partitioning, the above results this table, the improvement of the proposed approach is
are compared to those by the FCM method only. Two cases of plain 53.4% over plain partitioning by FCM in terms of MSE (i.e.,
FCM partitioning are made, i.e., setting clustering number c = 5 and (0.3145–0.2050)/0.2050). If we take the square root of MSE as
C = 14 respectively. The first number, 5, is arbitrarily chosen while the index, then the improvement is 24%.
232 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233
The plain partitioning by FCM is no match to the proposed way,
not to mention that the former way provides messy and hard-to-
figure-out-meaning clustered groups.
4.3. Discrete model-based operation strategy and implementation
As the models of outlet temperature of cooling water Tcw,out are
acquired with good precision in previous section, the next task is
the formulation of model-based optimal operation for the cooling
tower. The objective of the optimal operation is to keep the cooling
water temperature below the certain point demanded by the pro-
cess end users with the minimizing the consumed electrical power.
The temperature of cooling water is demanded below the level of
34 °C by the end user and the upper temperature bound is set at
33.5 °C by utility operators in this study. The control scheme is
to predict the outlet temperature of cooling water based on the
present conditions of operation variables. All possible modes for
the next operation are reviewed based on the above model, and
the optimal mode that can make the outlet temperature fall below
the target with the least electricity can be acquired.
Denote the model of outlet cooling water temperature as fm(),
with m indicating the different level of the fan operating mode.
The model-based approach of fan operation is formulated as
follows:
moptional ðkÞ ¼ arg min j Tb m 
cw;out ðkÞ  33 Cj ðm ¼ 1; . . . ; 7Þ
X
2
s:t: Tb m qi ð/ðkÞÞ  ^f i ð½1 /ðkÞÞ
cw;out ðkÞ ¼
i¼1
/ðkÞ ¼ ½F cw ðkÞ; T cw;in ðkÞ; T Dair;in ðkÞ; RHair;in ðkÞ
Tb m 
cw;out ðkÞ < 33:5 C
The experiment was demonstrated in the period of from 8:15 to
14:50 on May 22, 2012. An off-line PC implemented with the
built-in model was temporarily connected to the distributed control
system. The suggested fan mode was presented based on the calcu-
lation of the model, and passed to the operator to adjust the fan
mode of the cooling tower during the period of the experiment.
Fig. 8 shows the historical data of inlet temperature of cooling
C0 L2 H1 C2 L1 H0
40
38
36
34
32
30
28
26
08:00 09:00
Fig. 8. Model-based operation results for actual cooling tower.
tower Tcw,in, ambient air temperature T Dair;in , predicted outlet tem-
perature T b cw;out and measured outlet temperature Tcw,out.
Before the implementation of model-based operation, the on-
duty operator set the cooling fan mode at C0_L2_H1. The move
was a bit conservative and wasteful because outlet temperature
was 28 °C, almost 5.5 °C below the set point of 33.5 °C. After check-
ing the prediction accuracy, the operation was switched to the
model-based control. A series of actions were taken in the 6-h
experiment. The actions included the adjustment to operating
mode C2_L1_H0, C3_L0_H0 and C0_L3_H0 at time 8:15, 9:20 and
11:20, respectively. The outlet temperature Tcw,out is accurately
predicted by the cluster-based models and the outlet temperature
smoothly approached the set point and stayed in the proximity of
33.5 °C.
Taking the original fan mode of C0_L2_H1 mode and the associ-
ated power as the baseline, 72.36% of the electricity consumption,
i.e., 608 kW h, was saved. The resulted benefit/cost ratio is signifi-
cant, considering that almost no fixed cost is needed in the imple-
mentation of model-based optimal operation. In our study, we
estimate that the energy saving would be up to 114 MW h/month
in the summer while 16 MW h/month in the winter. It is reason-
able that operators used to operate cooling fan conservatively or
even wastefully in order to fulfill their duty of providing low tem-
perature cooling water. The proposed model-based approach pro-
vides the best practical opportunity to conserve energy in the
operation of a cooling tower.
5. Conclusion
ð7Þ
This paper proposed a dimensionless cooling capability index to
investigate how the operation variables affect the power efficiency
of the fan operation. The analysis of PCA and FCM partitioning re-
vealed the similar results that ambient air temperature and rela-
tive humidity played the important role. Taking the fact that the
operation data within the same fan operating mode have the sim-
ilar cooling capability index, the multiple models were constructed
based on the combination way of partitioning data, first by the ac-
quired knowledge and then by FCM clustering.
A discrete model-based operation was demonstrated in an
experimental trial. The experiment showed the promising result
C3 L0 H0 C0 L3 H0
TD
air,in
Tcw,in
Tcw,out,measured
33
Tcw,out,predicted
10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00
Time
 J.-G. Wang et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 73 (2013) 226–233
of saving 72% of electric power. Comparing the effort taking to
implement the proposed model-based operation to the effect
shown in the test trial, the resulting improvement was good en-
ough to convince the operator to shift the present practice to mod-
el-based operation. As a matter of fact, it is hard for any operator to
make the optimal decision without precise knowledge on how to
adjust the fan mode. The proposed approach provides the best
practical opportunity in the operation of a cooling tower. Further-
more, once the operation shifts to the proposed approach, the mul-
tiple models to be further refined based on the future operation
data is to be more accurate because the operation is close to opti-
mal. The whole approach becomes a positive cycle to conserve en-
ergy in the cooling fan operation.
Acknowledgements
S.S. Jang would like to thank the financial support provided by
Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan, under the Grant 101-EC-
17-A-09-S1-198, and the support of Grant 101N2027E1 from Cen-
ter for Energy and Environmental Research, National Tsing-Hua
University, Taiwan. J.G. Wang would like to acknowledge the sup-
port of National Nature Science Foundation of China under the
Grants 61171145 and 61104061.
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