Experimental study on the thermal performance of a mechanical cooling tower with different drift eliminators

Lucas, M.; Martínez, Pedro García; Viedma, A.

doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2008.11.008

Cited by 54 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Although pressure drop is a primary variable, to evaluate a drift eliminator it will be necessary to assess its influence on the cooling tower's thermal performance. Lucas et al (2009) have 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 demonstrated, by the experimental calculation of the tower characteristic, that the physical configuration of the drift eliminator influences the thermal performance of the cooling tower for the same water to air mass flow ratio. This result was explained in terms of the drift eliminator getting wet and therefore becoming an additional packing volume and contributes to the heat and mass transfer exchange.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental determination of drift loss from a cooling tower with different drift eliminators using the chemical balance method

Lucas

Martínez

Viedma

2012

International Journal of Refrigeration

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The existence of cooling towers arises from the need to evacuate power to the environment from engines, refrigeration equipment and industrial processes. Water drift emitted from cooling towers is objectionable for several reasons, mainly due to human health hazards. It is common practice to fit drift eliminators to cooling towers in order to minimise water loss from the system. The presence of the drift eliminator mainly affects two aspects of cooling towers: their thermal performance and the amount of water drift loss. This paper experimentally studies the drift loss emissions from a cooling tower without drift eliminator and fitted with six different drift eliminators. Chemical Balance is the selected method and Australian Standard methodology is taken as a reference. Some modifications are proposed to reduce uncertainty by increasing the duration of the test and the number of water samples. Installation of a drift eliminator, even in the worst case, reduces the water drift level to less than half of the situation without the eliminator. The water drift losses obtained with the different drift eliminators installed at the pilot plant, from 0.0118% to 0.161%, are within the range generally reflected in the literature. Finally, a criterion for designing drift eliminators in order to optimise both the collection efficiency and the cooling tower's thermal performance is proposed. We accept all the conditions included in the journal web about transfer, copyright and originality.The manuscript material neither has been published in nor submitted to a journal previously.According to IJR's focus, research deals on condensation and air conditioning. Accent has been placed on experimental details. We hope the originals will fulfil all your requirements.We look forward to your reply. Yours sincerely, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 Manuel Lucas AbstractThe existence of cooling towers arises from the need to evacuate power to the environment from engines, refrigeration equipment and industrial processes. Water drift emitted from cooling towers is objectionable for several reasons, mainly due to human health hazards. It is common practice to fit drift eliminators to cooling towers in order to minimise water loss from the system. The presence of the drift eliminator mainly affects two aspects of cooling towers: their thermal performance and the amount of water drift loss. This paper experimentally studies the drift loss emissions from a cooling tower without drift eliminator and fitted with six different drift eliminators.Chemical Balance is the selected method and Australian Standard methodology is taken as a reference. Some modifications are proposed to reduce uncertainty by increasing the duration of the test and the number of water samples. Installation of a drift eliminator, even in the worst ca...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Experimental determination of drift loss from a cooling tower with different drift eliminators using the chemical balance method

Lucas

Martínez

Viedma

2012

International Journal of Refrigeration

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“…As a result, no important effect on increasing the outlet water temperature was found, and this may be used easily in front of the towers to filter dusty air. Lucas et al [12] developed a study to analyze the influence of the drift eliminator on the thermal performance of a draft counter-flow wet cooling tower. The tower characteristic was also correlated with water-to-air mass flow ratios for six different drift eliminators, obtaining an average difference between them of 46.54%.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Optimum Design and Operation of an HVAC Cooling Tower for Energy and Water Conservation

2017

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Abstract:The energy consumption increase in the last few years has contributed to developing energy efficiency policies in many countries, the main goal of which is decreasing CO 2 emissions. One of the reasons for this increment has been caused by the use of air conditioning systems due to new comfort standards. In that regard, cooling towers and evaporative condensers are presented as efficient devices that operate with low-level water temperature. Moreover, the energy consumption and the cost of the equipment are lower than other systems like air condensers at the same operation conditions. This work models an air conditioning system in TRNSYS software, the main elements if which are a cooling tower, a water-water chiller and a reference building. The cooling tower model is validated using experimental data in a pilot plant. The main objective is to implement an optimizing control strategy in order to reduce both energy and water consumption. Furthermore a comparison between three typical methods of capacity control is carried out. Additionally, different cooling tower configurations are assessed, involving six drift eliminators and two water distribution systems. Results show the influence of optimizing the control strategy and cooling tower configuration, with a maximum energy savings of 10.8% per story and a reduction of 4.8% in water consumption.

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“…Walker et al (1923) proposed a basic theory of cooling tower operation. Merkel (1925) developed the first practical theory including the differential equations of heat and mass transfer, which has been well received as the basis for most work on cooling tower modeling and analysis (Khan et al, 2003;Elsarrag, 2006;Qureshi and Zubair, 2006;ASHRAE, 2008;Lucas et al, 2009). In Merkel's model, in order to simplify the analysis, the water loss of evaporation is neglected, and the Lewis relation is assumed as unity.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic Modeling of Mechanical Draft Counter-Flow Wet Cooling Tower With Modelica

Seem

2010

ASME 2010 Dynamic Systems and Control Conference, Volume 2

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Cooling towers are important equipments for the HVAC systems in commercial buildings, rejecting the process heat generation to the atmosphere. Dynamic modeling of cooling towers is beneficial for control design and fault detection and diagnostics of the chilled-water systems. This paper proposes a simple and yet effective dynamic model for a typical mechanical draft counter-flow wet cooling tower. The finite volume method is applied to the one-dimensional heat and mass transfer analysis. With control volumes defined separately for the water and air sides, the dynamic equations are constructed with the mass and energy balances. The steady-state performance of the proposed model is evaluated with experimental data from literature. The transient behavior is also simulated under the changes of tower inlet conditions, with the performance to be evaluated in the future with field test data.

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Experimental study on the thermal performance of a mechanical cooling tower with different drift eliminators

Cited by 54 publications

References 11 publications

Experimental determination of drift loss from a cooling tower with different drift eliminators using the chemical balance method

Experimental determination of drift loss from a cooling tower with different drift eliminators using the chemical balance method

Optimum Design and Operation of an HVAC Cooling Tower for Energy and Water Conservation

Dynamic Modeling of Mechanical Draft Counter-Flow Wet Cooling Tower With Modelica

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