Numerical study of coupled heat and mass transfer in geothermal water cooling tower

Bourouni, K.; Bassem, Mohamed Mehdi; Chaïbi, M.T.

doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2007.10.003

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…This is confirmed by the fact that the ambient air flow through the fan is characterized by high humidity with low temperature during winter climate conditions. This result confirms the one obtained in the previous theoretical analysis of the same tower developed by Bourouni et al [20] stating that the evaporative potential is dominating the convective one in the cooling process. The obtained results of this case study are in good agreement with those found in the literature particularly the one found by Stranford [21] who reported that more than two thirds of transferred heat lost during cooling is due to evaporation with the remainder being transferred by convection.…”

Section: Water Temperature Distribution Inside the Cooling Towersupporting

confidence: 92%

Experimental Analysis of the Performance of a Mechanical Geothermal Water Cooling Tower in South Tunisia

Chaïbi¹,

Bourouni²,

Bassem³

2013

AJER

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The paper reports the results of pilot test on the cooling performance of a direct cross flow mechanical cooling tower located in the Kebili region in the southern part of Tunisia. In this study heat and mass transfer data are measured within the tower over a period of one year and compared with external weather data collected over the same period. The data enabled the influence of different weather conditions on the performance of the cooling tower to be analyzed. The results obtained show that ambient humidity has a greater influence on performance than external temperature. In fact, significantly better cooling performance of about 80% was obtained during the high temperature, low humidity summer months than during the winter period, less than 40%, with relatively low external temperature and high humidity. These results indicate the relative importance of evaporative cooling as compared to convective cooling. The effect of wind on cooling performance was found to be considerable but was confined to those periods when wind direction coincided with the orientation of the louvers of the tower. This was observed to occur only during the summer period when compared to winter period, thus attesting the benefits of the use of proper cooling tower design for improving efficiency and conserve energy.

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Section: Water Temperature Distribution Inside the Cooling Towersupporting

confidence: 92%

Experimental Analysis of the Performance of a Mechanical Geothermal Water Cooling Tower in South Tunisia

Chaïbi¹,

Bourouni²,

Bassem³

2013

AJER

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“…The heat and mass transfer processes in different types of cooling towers have been subject of extensive scientific research. These studies include experimental and numerical investigations of thermal and hydraulic performance of mechanical air draft wet cooling towers with counterflow [5], parallelflow [6], and crossflow arrangements [7,8], as well as natural air draft dry cooling towers with adjacent Savonius turbines [9], solar preheating of the airflow [10], water redistribution systems [11], water systems with vertical and horizontal spray nozzles [12]. All of these solutions aim to increase the cooling tower efficiency.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Numerical Investigation of Heat and Mass Transfer Inside a Wet Cooling Tower

Blecich

Wolf

2018

Teh. glas. (Online)

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This paper presents a numerical investigation of heat and mass transfer inside a wet cooling tower with forced air draft, which find application in energy process industries and oil refineries. The mathematical model consists of mass, momentum and energy conservation equations, water droplet trajectories and their interaction with the gas phase, the computational domain and boundary conditions. Numerical distributions of air velocity, air temperatures, water vapor fractions and evaporation rates are shown and discussed. The wet cooling tower achieves an efficiency of around 80%, which can be improved by optimizing the value of the water droplet size, nozzle spray angle and water-to-air flow rate ratio. The water droplet size has a dominant effect on the cooling tower efficiency, whereas small droplets improve the efficiency up to 10%. On the other hand, the spray angle and the water-to-air ratio lead to slight improvements, about 2-3% in the best case.

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“…The heat and mass transfer coefficients are constant [25]. (3) Heat transfer from the tower fans to air or water streams is negligible [26], and the heat exchange between the wall of CWCT and the surroundings is negligible [2,3,25,26].…”

Section: Assumptions and Simplificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(2) Water and air specific heats are constant [2,23,[25][26][27]. The heat and mass transfer coefficients are constant [25].…”

Section: Assumptions and Simplificationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Performance Analyses of Counter-Flow Closed Wet Cooling Towers Based on a Simplified Calculation Method

Wei

Peng

et al. 2017

Energies

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Abstract:As one of the most widely used units in water cooling systems, the closed wet cooling towers (CWCTs) have two typical counter-flow constructions, in which the spray water flows from the top to the bottom, and the moist air and cooling water flow in the opposite direction vertically (parallel) or horizontally (cross), respectively. This study aims to present a simplified calculation method for conveniently and accurately analyzing the thermal performance of the two types of counter-flow CWCTs, viz. the parallel counter-flow CWCT (PCFCWCT) and the cross counter-flow CWCT (CCFCWCT). A simplified cooling capacity model that just includes two characteristic parameters is developed. The Levenberg-Marquardt method is employed to determine the model parameters by curve fitting of experimental data. Based on the proposed model, the predicted outlet temperatures of the process water are compared with the measurements of a PCFCWCT and a CCFCWCT, respectively, reported in the literature. The results indicate that the predicted values agree well with the experimental data in previous studies. The maximum absolute errors in predicting the process water outlet temperatures are 0.20 and 0.24 • C for the PCFCWCT and CCFCWCT, respectively. These results indicate that the simplified method is reliable for performance prediction of counter-flow CWCTs. Although the flow patterns of the two towers are different, the variation trends of thermal performance are similar to each other under various operating conditions. The inlet air wet-bulb temperature, inlet cooling water temperature, air flow rate, and cooling water flow rate are crucial for determining the cooling capacity of a counter-flow CWCT, while the cooling tower effectiveness is mainly determined by the flow rates of air and cooling water. Compared with the CCFCWCT, the PCFCWCT is much more applicable in a large-scale cooling water system, and the superiority would be amplified when the scale of water distribution system increases. Without multiple iterative calculations and extensive experimental data, the simplified method could be used to effectively analyze the thermal performance of counter-flow CWCTs in operation. It is useful for optimization operation of counter-flow CWCTs such that to improve the energy efficiency of the overall cooling water system.

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Numerical study of coupled heat and mass transfer in geothermal water cooling tower

Cited by 15 publications

References 5 publications

Experimental Analysis of the Performance of a Mechanical Geothermal Water Cooling Tower in South Tunisia

Experimental Analysis of the Performance of a Mechanical Geothermal Water Cooling Tower in South Tunisia

Numerical Investigation of Heat and Mass Transfer Inside a Wet Cooling Tower

Performance Analyses of Counter-Flow Closed Wet Cooling Towers Based on a Simplified Calculation Method

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