Experimental Study on the Resistance and Splash Performances of Water Collecting Devices for Mechanical Draft Cooling Towers

Abstract

In recent years, water collecting systems, with the associated advantages of energy saving and noise reduction, have become the foundation for the development of a scheme to optimize the structure of cooling towers. To explore the feasibility of this approach for mechanical draft cooling towers, a small-scale experimental device has been built to study the resistance and splash performances of three U-type water collecting devices (WCDs) for different water flow rates and wind speeds. The experimental results show that within the considered ranges of wind speed and water flow rate, the pressure drop of the different WCDs can vary significantly. The resistance and local splash performances can also be remarkably different. Some recommendations about the most suitable system are provided. Moreover, a regression analysis of the experimental data is conducted, and the resulting fitting formulas for resistance and splash performance of WCD are reported.