Air Cooling Technology for Power Stations: Research Progress and Perspectives

Air cooling technology, which uses air at the cold end of the power station to complete heat exchanger cooling, has unique advantages in water saving, consumption reduction, emission reduction and cost reduction compared with wet cooling technology. From the perspective of system design and operation optimization, the research progress of two types of air cooling technologies, direct and indirect air cooling, is reviewed. In terms of design optimization, the flow heat transfer characteristics of heat exchangers (condensers and radiators) have been extensively studied, and the relevant optimizations are generally carried out from the perspectives of geometric structure, position layout, etc., but at present, the research objects of condensers arc mostly limited to finned tubes, and there is a lack of optimization research on the overall tube bundle, and research on the radiators needs to consider the influence of geometric parameters more comprehensively. In addition, since the fan (group) directly determines the inlet flow rate of the condenser, its aerodynamic characteristics and cluster effect have become the focus of research, and a variety of zoning methods and operation control strategies have been formed to implement tuning, but the economic analysis and research of the optimization scheme needs to be further carried out. In terms of operation optimization, in order to weaken the negative impact of environmental effects on the air cooling system, the flow field can be improved by installing deflectors to expand the positive effect of wind, developing control prediction models for antifreeze control or designing antifreeze devices to optimize heat transfer, and designing and developing various cleaning systems for descaling. At present, there is still room for improvement in research on the accuracy and breadth of heat exchanger design optimization and the mechanism of various environmental effects, and future research directions include the adaptability analysis of air cooling in the application of new energy power stations, and the use of artificial intelligence technology for heat exchanger design and performance prediction. © 2023 Xi'an Jiaotong University. All rights reserved.