CFD MODELING AND ANALYSIS FOR A-AREA AND H-AREA COOLING TOWERS

[摘要] Mechanical draft cooling towers are designed to cool process water via sensible and latent heat transfer to air. Heat and mass transfer take place simultaneously. Heat is transferred as sensible heat due to the temperature difference between liquid and gas phases, and as the latent heat of the water as it evaporates. Mass of water vapor is transferred due to the difference between the vapor pressure at the air-liquid interface and the partial pressure of water vapor in the bulk of the air. Equations to govern these phenomena are discussed here. The governing equations are solved by taking a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. The purpose of the work is to develop a three-dimensional CFD model to evaluate the flow patterns inside the cooling tower cell driven by cooling fan and wind, considering the cooling fans to be on or off. Two types of the cooling towers are considered here. One is cross-flow type cooling tower located in A-Area, and the other is counterflow type cooling tower located in H-Area. The cooling tower located in A-Area is mechanical draft cooling tower (MDCT) consisting of four compartment cells as shown in Fig. 1. It is 13.7m wide, 36.8m long, and 9.4m high. Each cell has its own cooling fan and shroud without any flow communications between two adjacent cells. There are water distribution decks on both sides of the fan shroud. The deck floor has an array of about 25mm size holes through which water droplet falls into the cell region cooled by the ambient air driven by fan and wind, and it is eventually collected in basin area. As shown in Fig. 1, about 0.15-m thick drift eliminator allows ambient air to be humidified through the evaporative cooling process without entrainment of water droplets into the shroud exit. The H-Area cooling tower is about 7.3 m wide, 29.3 m long, and 9.0 m high. Each cell has its own cooling fan and shroud, but each of two corner cells has two panels to shield wind at the bottom of the cells. There is some degree of flow communications between adjacent cells through the 9-in gap at the bottom of the tower cells as shown in Fig. 2. Detailed geometrical dimensions for the H-Area tower configurations are presented in the figure. The model was benchmarked and verified against off-site and on-site test results. The verified model was applied to the investigation of cooling fan and wind effects on water cooling in cells when fans are off and on. This report will discuss the modeling and test results.

[发布日期] 2009-09-02

[学科分类] 工程和技术（综合）

[关键词] COOLING TOWERS;FORCED CONVECTION;FLOW MODELS;HEAT TRANSFER;MASS TRANSFER;WATER VAPOR;FLUID MECHANICS;BLOWERS;CROSSFLOW SYSTEMS;COUNTERFLOW SYSTEMS;DESIGN;WIND