Estimation of performance parameters of a counter flow cooling tower using biomass packing

Heat removal and dissipation is required in all cooling systems and most industrial processes, as well as in nuclear and thermal power plants. This heat is commonly transferred to water. To overcome ecological and economic problems, water has to be cooled afterwards, and cooling towers are the typical solutions. The selection of an appropriate filling can optimize the system performance. In this work, a wet cooling tower (WCT) is built. Cold air flows upwards and hot water supplied from the top in counterflow direction and a Celdek packing is used as filling to enhance heat & mass transfer. Experiments are conducted for different velocities of air, flow rates of water, and hot water temperatures. Results yielded a tower efficiency, coefficient of performance, and cooling characteristic coefficient of 60%, 5 and 4, respectively. Range of 32 degrees C and evaporation rate of 3.6 g/s are achieved by the current cooling tower setup. The proposed cooling tower with celdek packing material gave 58% efficiency which is 10% higher as compared to the similar cooling towers used in industries. It can be concluded that Celdek packing may be considered as an alternative efficient filling material for forced draft cooling towers with high performance.