Engineering and economic evaluation of wet/dry cooling towers for water conservation
The results are presented of a design and cost study for wet/dry tower systems used in conjunction with 1000 MWe nuclear power plants to reject waste heat while conserving water. Design and cost information for wet/dry tower systems are presented, and these cooling system alternatives are compared with wet and dry tower systems to determine whether the wet/dry tower concept is an economically viable alternative. The wet/dry cooling tower concept investigated is one which combines physically separated wet towers and dry towers into an operational unit. In designing the wet/dry tower, a dry cooling tower is sized to carry the plant heat load at low ambient temperatures, and a separate wet tower is added to augment the heat rejection of the dry tower at higher ambient temperatures. These wet/dry towers are designed to operate with a conventional low back pressure turbine commercially available today. The component wet and dry towers are state-of-the-art designs. From this study it was concluded that: wet/dry cooling systems can be designed to provide a significant economic advantage over dry cooling yet closely matching the dry tower's ability to conserve water, a wet/dry system which saves as much as 99 percent of the make-up water required by a wet tower can maintain that economic advantage, and therefore, for power plant sites where water is in short supply, wet/dry cooling is the economic choice over dry cooling.
- Research Organization:
- United Engineers and Constructors, Inc., Philadelphia, PA (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EY-76-C-02-2442
- OSTI ID:
- 7101949
- Report Number(s):
- COO-2442-1; TRN: 77-013859
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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ECONOMICS
NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS
CLOSED-CYCLE COOLING SYSTEMS
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