Determination of fan flow and water rate adjustment for off-design cooling tower tests
The determination of the performance of a mechanical draft cooling tower requires that the air mass flow through the tower be known. Since this flow is not measured, it has been customary to use the manufacturer's design air flow and adjust it by the one-third power of the ratio of the design to test fan horsepower. The most nearly correct approximation of air flow through a tower can be obtained by incrementally moving through the tower from air inlet to outlet while calculating mass flows, energy balances, and pressure drops for each increment and then utilizing fan curves to determine volumetric and mass flows. This procedure would account for changes in air humidity and density through the tower, evaporation of water, effect of water rate on air pressure drop, and changes in fan characteristics. These type calculations may be within the capabilities of all in the near future, but for the interim, it is recommended that a more elementary approach be used which can be handled with a good calculator and without any proprietary data. This approach depends on certain assumptions which are acceptable if the tower test is conducted within CTI code requirements. The fan must be considered a constant suction volume blower for a given blade pitch. The total pressure at the fan, a function of volumetric flow and wet air density, must be assumed to be unaffected by other considerations, and the fan horsepower must be assumed to change only as volumetric flow and wet air density changes. Given these assumptions, along with design information normally provided with a tower, the determination of air flow through a tower in a test can be made from CTI test data. The air flow, and consequently the water rate adjustment and corrected water to air ratio, are derived and found to be direct functions of horsepower and density and an inverse function of wet air humidities.
- Research Organization:
- Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, TN (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-26
- OSTI ID:
- 5249812
- Report Number(s):
- K/PS-5026; CONF-840238-1; ON: DE84007960
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Cooling Tower Institute annual technical meeting, Houston, TX, USA, 6 Feb 1984
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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