Simulation of Natural Draft Wet Cooling Tower with Variation of Air

Inlet Height through Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract: Current paper deals with how reduce the evaporation losses in natural draft wet cooling
tower by using 2D CFD model analysis. A software model of CFD k- is used by this model we are
analyzed how the large scale difference occurs in 2D CFD model of NDWCT. By varying the inlet
height of tower. This study is based on the 117 m total tower height with varying inlet height of 5.9,
6.1, and 6.3 meters. By these models we have check the outlet let temperature and relative humidity
and in which model outlet temperature is high and relative humidity is low that model is called
optimized model.
Keywords: Natural draft wet cooling tower, computational fluid dynamics, k- Model




Arvind Kumar Patel
Research Scholar In Mechanical Engineering Department,
Maulana Azad National Institute Of Technology
Bhopal, India

Dr. Alok Singh
Assistance Professor In Mechanical Engineering Department,
Maulana Azad National Institute Of Technology
Bhopal, India
I SSN 2319-9725

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1. Introduction:
A cooling tower is a heat rejection device, which extracts waste heat to the atmosphere
through the cooling of water stream to a lower temperature. The type of heat rejection in a
cooling tower is termed "evaporative" in that it allows a small portion of water being cooled
to evaporative into a moving air stream to provide significant cooling to the rest of that water
stream. Evaporative heat rejection devices such as cooling towers are commonly used to
provide significantly lower water temperature than achievable with "air cooled" or "dry" heat
rejection devices. the design of current model is prepared with the help of fluent code" Ansys
13".by this model we are checking different operational parameter of natural draft wet
cooling tower .current design procedure is based on the two dimensional model of heat and
mass transfer, the equation used in this model is ordinary differential equation and basic
navior-stoke equation is used. Air flow is solved as continuous phase using Eulerian approach
whereas droplet trajectories are solved as dispersed phase using the Lagrangian approach.
The influence of crosswind condition to the thermal performance of natural draft wet cooling
tower was also investigated in this work.

2. Natural Draft Wet Cooling Tower:
Natural draft wet cooling tower (NDWCT) are based on the Merkel's theory of heat and mass
transfer. According to Markels theory heat an mass transfer between fluids and air depends
upon the enthalpy gradient between the state of saturation of air in the boundary layer on the
surface of the hot water and the state of air in the colder core stream.
There are three different heat and mass transfer zone:
1) spray zone 2) fill zone 3) rain zone
the water is brought into the tower form the condenser through a pump and injected into the
cooling tower approximately 8-10 m above the basin. this water is injected through nozzle.
the function of spray zone is splash the water into smaller droplets before collides with the
fin. there is a range of fill type Generally they tend to be either a splash bar fill type or film
fill type. The splash bar type acts to break up water flow into smaller droplets with splash
bars or other means. When water strikes with the fin there is a very high humidity inside the
cooling tower.


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1 Overall height of cooling tower 117 m
2 Air inlet height of cooling tower 6.1 m
3 Water inlet height 8.5 m
4 Depth of cooling tower basin 2.25m
5 Diameter of cooling tower basin 81.994 m
6 Diameter of cooling tower at fill material 77.744 m
7 Diameter of cooling tower outlet 46.744 m
8 Diameter of cooling tower at throat 48.648 m
Table 1: Physical Parametre Of Cooling Tower Model

3. Steps Used In Preparing Geometry Of Cooling Tower:
In the first step geometry is created in 2D using reference data of different part of cooling
tower. The structure of whole model imagined in advance, because the possibilities in the
subsequent steps depended on the composition of different geometrical shapes.
The various assumptions were made during preparing the model.
1. 2-D symmetric model is developed; fix the fill corresponding to the real arrangement.
2. Inlet and outlet space is created in bottom and top of the tower.
3. Cooling tower shall is considered as a wall with zero thickness and its profile is
formed by curve with three point including throat.
4. Assuming symmetrical thermal and flow field in the model, only one half of the
cooling tower is modeled with a symmetry boundary condition.


Figure 1: Geometry of cooling tower model

4. Meshing Of The Model:
Appropriate resolution of the flow field inside the computational fluid dynamics After
geometry mesh is generated. During mesh generation so much care is to be taken because the
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end results very much depend on quality of mesh. In order to have an domain is define into a
large number of finite volume cells.
Various steps are used in generating mesh:
1. Different part is meshed with different element sizing.
2. Fill zone must be fine meshed.
3. By used mapped face mesh the model with appropriate element sizing
4. The inner and outer surface of the wall inside the model has identical shapes but is
disconnected so the mesh size on the two walls can be differ
Thermal parameters used in fluent analysis:-

Figure 2
4.1.Cell Zone Condition:
In cell zone surface body is considered as fluid. The operating pressure is atmospheric in
upstream from the centre line of cooling tower. The gravitational acceleration is 9.81 m/s2.
Operating temperature is 298 K and operating density is 1.22 kg/m3.

4.2.Boundary Condition:
Velocity inlet boundary condition is used to define the inlet velocity and other property of air
takes normal to the boundary inlet. Turbulence is taken as intensity and length scale. Pressure
outlet of air is defined at outlet of air.







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Table 2: About The Fluent Model: Model Used In Anylysis
4.3.Standard k- Model :
The Standard k- (Launder and Spalding, 1974) model is the most widely used complete
RANS model and it is incorporated in most commercial CFD codes. In this model, the model
transport equations are solved for two turbulence quantities i.e, k and . The Standard k-
model turbulence model solves the flow based on the assumption that the rate of production
and dissipation of turbulent flows are in near-balance in energy transfer We use k and to
define velocity scale and length scale L representative of the large scale turbulence as
follow

5. Results And Conclusion:

Figure 3
1 Hot water temperature 316 K
2 Cold water temperature 305 K
3 Dry bulb temperature of ambient air 308.96 K
4 Wet bulb temperature of ambient air 300 K
5 Relative humidity of ambient air 49.98 %
6 Cooling range 11 K
7 Approach 5 K
8 Water flow rate 6950 lit/sec
9 Water flow rate through per nozzle 232 lit/sec
10 Number of nozzle 2898
11 Makeup water 139 lit/sec
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Figure 4

Figure 5

Figure 6
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Figure 7

Figure 8
6. Conclusion:
S.No. Property 5.7 m Air
inlet height
5.7 m Air
inlet height
5.9 m Air
inlet height
6.1 m Air
inlet height
1 Temperature 310.159 310.194 310.165 310.813
2 Dynamic pressure 0.2238 0.2780 0.2358 0.2973
3 Velocity 0.4884 0.5280 0.5355 0.5427
4 Relative humidity 0.9376 0.9801 0.9726 0.9259
5 Specfic heat 1044.521 1045.048 1044.31 1040.940
6 Enthalpy 12571.762 12609.604 12534.35 11425.054
7 Entropy 76.8364 76.9580 76.7175 73.0320
8 Mass fraction of water 0.03922 0.03983 0.03983 0.03495
Table 3
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A two dimensional CFD model of natural draft wet cooling tower has been developed and
validated along with actual data of NTPC dadri power plant and it is found that the result was
very near and accurate to the actual data. By modeling and simulation of various air inlet
heights it was found that the result with 6.3 m air inlet height is optimum and best.
Simulation results with 6.3 m air inlet height reduce significantly the amount of makeup
water and increase the effectiveness of cooling tower. Amount of makeup water saved with
6.3 m air inlet height is 7.15*10
7
liters in a year. The effectiveness of cooling tower with
actual air inlet height is 68.75% and the effectiveness of cooling tower with optimum air inlet
height is 73.29%. Means with the optimum air inlet height the effectiveness of cooling tower
is increased by 6.194%. Also the power which is required to mix the makeup water with the
cooled water is saved. So the efficiency of power plant is also increased by significantly.


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