Thermal performance of cross flow cooling towers in variable wet bulb temperature

Cooling towers are widely used in most industrial units to reject waste heat to the atmosphere. Wet towers are usually designed to operate in hot and dry weather conditions with narrow range of wet bulb temperature, but many cooling towers are required to operate in weather condition with large variation of wet bulb temperature which strongly affects the thermal performance of the towers. In this paper a conventional mathematical model is used to predict the thermal behavior of an existing cross flow tower under variable wet bulb temperature and the results are compared with experimental data in various operating conditions. Available fill characteristic curve of the tower is obtained to estimate its departure from the design conditions. It is found that when the wet bulb temperature increases, the approach, range and evaporation loss would increase considerably. Variation of evaporation loss versus wet bulb temperature was estimated. Finally the effect of placing an impact separator in front of air louvers on thermal performance of the tower is investigated. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.