Spray Effect on the Thermal Performances of a Dry Cooling Tower

Pre-cooling the inlet air of a dry cooling tower by means of a spray can improve the tower performance during periods of high temperature.To study the spray effect on the thermal performance of natural draft dry cooling towers(NDDCTs),in this study 3-D numerical simulations of such a process have been conducted using Fluent 16.2(a two-way coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian approach).The considered NDDCT is 120 m high and only half system is simulated due to its structural symmetry.Three different spray strategies have been investigated at a typical crosswind speed of 4 m/s,which is the most frequent wind speed.The results have shown that:(1)The three implemented spray strategies can improve the thermal performance of the studied NDDCT with a vary-ing degree of success.In one case,the heat rejection rate can be increased by 35.2%,and the tower outlet water temperature can be decreased by 2.1℃ when compared with the no spray case;(2)To improve the thermal per-formance of the NDDCT using a small amount of water,the design of the spray pre-cooling system must include more nozzles on the windward and fewer or even no nozzles on the leeward sides of the NDDCT.

Impact of Crosswind on Steady-State and Dynamic Performance of Natural Draft Dry Cooling Tower Group:A Numerical Analysis

This study investigates the performance of a natural draft dry cooling tower group in crosswind conditions through numerical analysis.A comprehensive three-dimensional model is developed to analyze the steady-state and dynamic behavior of the towers.The impact of wind speed and direction on heat rejection capacity and flow patterns is examined.Results indicate that crosswinds negatively affect the overall heat transfer capacity,with higher crosswind speeds leading to decreased heat transfer.Notably,wind direction plays a significant role,particularly at 0°.Moreover,tower response time increases with higher crosswind speeds due to increased turbulence and the formation of vortices.The response times are generally similar for wind directions of 45°and 90°,but differ when facing 0,where the leeward tower exhibits a shorter response time compared to the windward tower.These findings provide valuable insights into the performance of natural draft dry cooling tower groups under crosswind conditions,which can inform the design and operation of similar systems in practical applications.

A decoupled method to identify affecting mechanism of crosswind on performance of a natural draft dry cooling tower

The natural draft dry cooling tower(NDDCT)has been increasingly used for cooling in power generation in arid area.As crosswind affects the performance of a NDDCT in a complicated way,and the basic affecting mechanism is unclear,attempts have been made to improve the performance of a NDDCT based on limited experiences.This paper introduces a decoupled method to study the complicated crosswind effects on the inlet and outlet of a NDDCT separately by computational fluid dynamics(CFD)modeling and hot state experiments.Accordingly,the basic affecting mechanism of crosswind on the NDDCT performance is identified.Crosswind changes the inlet flow field of a NDDCT and induces mainstream vortices inside the tower,so as to degrade the ventilation.Besides,low crosswind deflects the upward plume at the outlet to further degrade the ventilation,while high crosswind induces the low pressure area at the outlet to reduce the ventilation degradation.

Experimental Study of Effects of Cross Wind on Flow in Natural-draft Dry-cooling Towers

The effects of cross wind on the flow field in natural draft dry cooling towers are studied experimentally in a wind tunnel using similarity principles. Particular attention is focused on the flow fields inside the tower. The study illustrates the influence of wind on the cooling tower performance and proposes a number of techniques for improving tower performance with a cross wind