Testing and evaluation of spray nozzles for counterflow cooling towers

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:435752

Buyens, D J; Kranc, S C ^[1]

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1. Univ. of South Florida, Tampa, FL (United States). Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Cooling towers may be viewed as heat exchangers which require work input to elevate and distribute water into a flowing air stream to achieve combined heat and mass transfer. Counterflow cooling towers employ an array of coarse spray nozzles operating at low head to spread water over a suitable fill occupying the plan area of the tower. Although the spray patterns from individual nozzles are usually overlapped, it is still difficult to produce a uniform areal deposition of water. The purpose of this paper is to establish appropriate testing procedures and to present observations of performance in relationship to nozzle configuration. To this end, several representative nozzles were tested and various measures of performance were established for individual nozzles as well as arrays. Spray pattern superposition and interference have been examined by simple experimental techniques, which include both sampling and enhanced visualization. Ultimately, the results of this experimental investigation can be used to relate individual nozzle selection to the overall performance of the tower.

• OSTI ID: 435752
• Report Number(s): CONF-951135--; ISBN 0-7918-1755-5
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
COOLING TOWERS
COUNTERFLOW SYSTEMS
DESIGN
FLOW VISUALIZATION
NOZZLES
PERFORMANCE TESTING
SPRAY COOLING