Cooling towers, the neglected orphan

Conference · Tue Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1996

OSTI ID:549936

Burger, R

What is the relationship between generating electricity and generating colder water? Knowledgeable engineers pay close attention to their sophisticated electric generating equipment but many ignore and take the seemingly simple cooling tower in the back yard for granted. When high head pressures occur in compressors and poor vacuums are evident in condensers, especially at peak demand, the cooling tower usually is the culprit and the limiting factor of production. As turbine back pressures increase, a plant experiences decreased cycle efficiency. This back pressure, in part, is due to insufficient cold cooling water discharging off the cooling tower. A recent joint survey by the Tennessee Valley Administration (TVA) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) which appeared in the August 1988 issue of Power Engineering Magazine indicated that 6% of the generating plants they examined with wet cooling towers, were operating at 80% of design purchased capacity. In other words, they were 20% short of being able to produce design kW output during peak demand and were costing industry over $250,000,000 per year in added fuel costs or lost retail sales, as reported in the article. This presentation will explain how that situation came about and delineates state-of-the-art retrofit technique to optimize the cooling tower`s cold water output to remedy the situation. Actual field retrofit conditions will illustrate how existing configurations of cooling towers can be upgraded with minimum structural and mechanical equipment change.

• OSTI ID: 549936
• Report Number(s): CONF-961006--; ISBN 0-7918-1796-2
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
AUGMENTATION
CAPACITY
COOLING TOWERS
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
PRESSURE DROP