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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Computerized engineering model for evaporative water cooling towers

Conference ·
OSTI ID:7066826
The evaporative cooling tower is often used to reject waste heat from industrial processes, especially power plants and chemical facilities. In particular, huge cooling towers are used for heat rejection from gaseous diffusion plants. The ability to analyze and/or predict the performance of these towers is an important process engineering function. A consistent physical model for crossflow and counterflow cooling towers is presented, which imposes rigorous heat and mass balances on each increment of the tower under study. Individual towers are characterized by specification of a mass evaporation rate equation. Water evaporation rates and temperatures are calculated for each increment. The discretization of the rate and balance equations is accurate to second order in the space variables. Computational evidence of this property is presented for both counterflow and crossflow cooling towers. The solution algorithm is described. Calculated profiles of air temperature, water temperature and evaporation rate within a counterflow and a crossflow tower are presented. Using a computer, the model allows reduction of test data, interpolation of the reduced data and comparison of test results to design data. These capabilities can be used to evaluate acceptance tests for new towers, to monitor changes in tower performance as an aid in planning maintenance, and to predict tower performance under changed operating conditions.
Research Organization:
Union Carbide Corp., Oak Ridge, TN (USA). Computer Sciences Div.
DOE Contract Number:
EY-76-C-02-0016
OSTI ID:
7066826
Report Number(s):
K/CSD/INF-77/1(Rev.1); CONF-780805-6
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English