Numerical optimization of a new design of cooling tower
- Miguel F. Caballero
- Mónica Hernández
- Iván Arocas
- Antonio Viedma
- Francisco Sánchez
- Javier Ruiz
- Manuel Lucas
- Antonio S. Kaiser.
Año de publicación: 2017
Tipo: Aportación congreso
Resumen
Cooling towers are one of the most efficient components dissipating heat from power plants,water-cooled refrigeration and air conditioning systems in buildings and industrial processes.However, during the last years, various outbreaks of Legionella caused by the drift fromcooling towers in urban areas occurred in southern Spain and other regions. Due to this fact,local public health authorities have introduced policies to replace the cooling towers withother less efficient systems,contributing to increase energy consumption and thusclimatechange effects.In this work, the numerical optimisationand analysis of a new design of cooling towerwithinverted flow are presented. The aim is to limit the drift and to reach energy efficiencysimilar to commercial mechanical draft cooling towers. For the optimised design, a thermodynamical study of the tower performance under different conditions of air and water flow iscarried out, assessing its drift, tower characteristics (CT) and efficiency. Particular emphasishas been placed on the numerical model of the filling and its interaction with water droplets.Numerical results show that the new design presents CT values slightly higher thancommercial cooling towers for different conditions of air and water flow. No significantdroplet emission has been detected in the numerical simulations.