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Key Laboratory of Pressure System and Safety(MOE), School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai 200237,
Peoples Republic of China
b
Shanghai Baofeng Machinery Manufacturing Co. Ltd, Shanghai 2004444, Peoples Republic of China
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 10 May 2011
Accepted 23 October 2011
Available online 30 October 2011
Closed wet cooling towers (CWCTs) characterize by smaller investment and exploitation cost as well as
fewer materials and less space. It can be regarded as a cooling tower with the packing replaced by a bank
of tubes. However, heat and mass transfer in an oval tube closed wet cooling tower (CWCT) have been
little investigated under different operating conditions. The thermal performance characteristics of an
oval tube CWCT were conducted. From the experimental results, correlations for the water-lm heat
transfer coefcient and airewater mass transfer coefcient are obtained. Experimental tests show the
water-lm heat transfer coefcient is a function of deluge-water temperature, deluge-water mass
velocity and air mass velocity, which is different from that in the public literatures. The airewater mass
transfer coefcient is a function of air mass velocity. In addition, a mathematical model with three
ordinary differential functions is presented to predict the outlet process water temperature. The model is
solved by a sectional method. The results show the analytical outlet temperature compares well with the
experimental data. The method is suitable for evaluating the performance of an oval tube CWCT.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Thermal performance
Oval tube
Closed wet cooling tower
Heat and mass transfer
Sectional method
1. Introduction
The energy saving and emission reduction are important for high
efcient cooling systems in China. As an environmental-friendly
cooling system, cooling towers are widely used to reject heat, cool
buildings and reduce the temperature of water circulated through
various heat rejection equipments. In comparison with the shelland-tube heat exchangers and cooling tower systems, CWCTs
characterize by smaller investment and exploitation cost as well as
fewer materials and less space. The closed wet cooling tower can be
regarded as a cooling tower with the packing replaced by a bank of
tubes. The process uid, such as water to be cooled, ows inside the
tubes. The deluge water is sprayed downward over the tube bundles
and then is pumped up to circulate in a closed circuit. The air ows
up through the bank of tubes. In this way, the energy is transferred
from the process uid through the tube wall to the deluge water and
then into the air due to convection and evaporation.
Many researchers have investigated the heat and mass transfer
processes in plain-tube CWCTs. Merkel [1] and Nottage [2]
described the fundamentals of the physical phenomena taking
place in cooling towers. The rst practical design procedure for the
* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: 86 02164253708.
E-mail addresses: zheng_weiye@163.com (W.-Y. Zheng), cedshzhu@ecust.edu.cn
(D.-S. Zhu).
1359-4311/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2011.10.047
234
Nomenclature
A
cp
d
G
h
hd
i
k
m
Q
T
Tp
Tw
K
w
Area, m2
specic heat constant pressure, J/kgK
Diameter, m
mass velocity, kg/sm2
heat transfer coefcient, W/m2K
mass transfer coefcient, kg/m2s
Enthalpy, J/kg
thermal conductivity, W/mK
mass ow rate, kg/s
heat transfer rate, W
Temperature, K
Subscripts
a
air, or based on air-side area
i
inlet, or inside
o
outlet, or outside
p
constant pressure or process water
w
water or wall
wb
wet-bulb
Fan
Outlet air:
Ambient drybulb temperature, Ta
Ambient relative humidity
Drift eliminator
Spray frame
Inlet process water
temperature, Tpi
Deluge water
temperature
entering the
spray frame, Tw
Heat exchanger
(tube bundle
with 8 passes)
Deluge water
temperature
through the tube
bundle, Twm
Process water
mass flow rate,
mp
Outlet process
water
temperature, T po
L=1.14m
Inlet air:
Ambient drybulb temperature, Ta
Ambient wetbulb temperature, Twb
Deluge water
mass flow rate,
mw
Deluge water
temperature in the sump,
Tw
Fig. 1. Sketch of experimental setup [10].
235
(1)
where the subscripts p and a refer to the heat transfer rate of the
process water and air-side respectively.
The overall heat transfer coefcient (K) between the process
water inside the oval tubes and the deluge water on the outside can
be written as
1
1
do lndo =di
do
di hi
K
hw
2kt
(3)
(4)
where Twm is the mean deluge-water temperature, Aa is the airewater interface area, and hw can be determined by Eqs. (2) and (3).
The outlet air enthalpy is measured or determined by Eq. (1). Thus
hd can be obtained by the above equations.
Tpo Twm Tpi Twm eUA=mp cpp
3. Experimental apparatus
3.1. Test apparatus
A test facility was assembled in Shanghai to test the cooling
tower, the schematic of which was shown in Fig. 1. The process water
was heated by stream vapor and stored in a constant temperature
water tank. The inlet temperature of the process water was
measured as it entered the cooling tower. The outlet water
temperature was measured by the calibrated PT100 at the bottom of
the tube bundle. The PT100 used could measure the temperature in
a wide range from 80 to 400 C keeping the possible error 0.1 C.
The volumetric ow rates of the process water and deluge water
were measured by two electromagnetic ow-meters with 0.5%
accuracy. The process water and deluge-water ow rates could be
(2)
Krger [14] suggested the use of simplied Merkel-type analysis. Heyns [10] found the following equations to evaluate the
water-lm heat transfer coefcient and airewater mass transfer
coefcient by assuming a constant mean deluge-water temperature
through the cooling tower.
Table 1
Experimental conditions.
Process water
Volume
ow rate
(m3/h)
20e37
Inlet
temperature
( C)
13.7e36
Inlet
velocity
(m/s)
2.5e5
Dry-bulb
temperature
( C)
4e15
Wet-bulb
temperature
( C)
2.1e9.6
236
The inuence of the air mass ow rate, deluge-water temperature and the deluge-water ow rate on the deluge-water lm heat
transfer coefcient and the airewater mass transfer coefcient is
investigated by the experiment. Based on Eqs. (1)e(4), lm heat
transfer coefcient hw and airewater mass transfer coefcient hd
can be determined with the measured or known values, and the
tube outer area is used as reference area.
The heat transfer rate of the air-side and process water has been
presented in Fig. 3. It can be seen that the heat balance data those
inhered within 10%. It implies that the heat balance of the
apparatus could be claimed to be satisfactory.
From the present experimental study, it is found that a delugewater mass velocity of 1.2 kg/m2s is needed for the uniform wetting
of all oval tubes in the tube bundle. An increase in deluge-water
ow rate above 1.2 kg/m2s does not signicantly improve cooling
capacity which is consistent with the results given by Faco [6] and
Peterson [15]. Thus, an optimum spray rate can be found through
experimental measures.
Fig. 4 shows the deluge-water lm heat transfer coefcient with
respect to the mean deluge-water temperature, which is a little
different from the correlations given by Mizushina et al. [4], Niitsu
et al. [5], Parker and Treybal [3] and Heyns [10]. Mizushina et al. [4]
and Niitsu et al. [5] describe the lm heat transfer coefcient as
a function of only deluge-water mass velocity. Parker and Treybal
[3] extend their correlation to include the effect of deluge-water
temperature. Heyns and Krger [10] state the lm heat transfer
coefcient is a function of deluge-water mass velocity, delugewater temperature and air mass velocity. The present experimental results show that the deluge-water lm heat transfer
coefcient is a function of air mass velocity, deluge-water mass
Deluge water
a
(1,1)
(1,2)
b
(1,n-1)
(1,n)
Process water
ma
ima+dima
mw
Tw
(2i-1,1)
(2i,1)
(2i-1,2)
(2i-1,n-1)
(2i,2)
(2i,n-1)
(2i-1,n)
mp
Tp
(2i,n)
Tube inside
mw
Tw+dTw
(N,1)
(N,2)
(N,n-1)
mp
Tp+dTp
dL
ma
ima
(N,n)
Air
tube coil with N tube rows and n elements per tube row
Fig. 6. Flowchart of the calculating process.
control volume
237
Start
Input inlet operating condition: mp, Tp,
ma, Ta, Twb, mw
Guess value Tw,in=Twb
Guess air outlet enthalpy
ima,out=ima,in
ima,out=ima,in+(imasw,Tw-ima,in)/1000
i=1:N/2
tube row (2i-1) element j=1 to n
Tw=Tw,in+0.05
|sum(ima(2N,1:n))/n/ima,in-1|<0.005
YES
|sum(Tw(2N,1:n))/n-Tw,in|<0.1
NO
YES
Outlet results: Tp, ima, Tw
End
Fig. 7. Flowchart diagram for the prediction of outlet process temperature.
(5)
for 2.57 < Ga < 4.94 kg/m2s; 1.2 < Gw G/d < 3.176 kg/m2s;
11 < Twm < 28 C where Ga ma/[(W Ntdo/2)L],
The correlations recommended by Mizushina et al. [4] and Heyns
and Krger [10] for airewater mass transfer coefcient are in terms of
air mass velocity and deluge-water temperature. Parker and Treybal
[3] and Niitsu et al. [5] describe the mass transfer coefcient only
0.1
0.0
0
Discrepancy, %
Temperature difference, T, oC
238
-0.1
-0.2
-0.3
-0.4
6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Operating condition
-2
-4
-6
-8
6 8 10 12 14 16 18
Operating condition
hd 0:034G0:977
;
a
(6)
(7)
dQp mp cpp dTp K Tp Tw dA
(8)
(9)
Tw;in Tw;out
(10)
A mathematical model with three ordinary differential functions (Eqs. (7)e(9)) and a boundary condition (Eq. (10)) is presented. The outlet temperature of process water in oval tubes is
predicted by a sectional method [16]. The tower consisted of 8 tube
rows, each tube row is divided into several elements. The energy of
239
Appendix A
Comparison between the model and the experimental results for the operating conditions.
Operating
condition
Vp (m3/h)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
27.66
28.47
28.47
27.24
27.54
28.10
27.47
28.28
28.31
26.91
27.29
27.94
27.31
28.11
28.22
26.66
Tin ( C)
33.16
22.91
22.54
39.22
36.03
20.91
33.21
22.93
22.56
39.27
33.48
20.92
33.26
22.99
22.61
39.36
Vd (m3/h)
15.21
15.07
15.32
15.25
12.48
12.59
15.11
15.09
15.24
15.19
12.23
12.32
14.97
15.08
15.22
15.13
Air
v (m/s)
Db ( C)
Wb ( C)
4.85
4.85
4.70
4.60
4.50
4.50
3.85
3.85
3.70
3.60
3.50
3.50
2.85
2.85
2.70
2.60
11.1
9.9
14.6
15.0
13.4
12.5
10.4
10.1
14.7
14.9
4.5
12.5
10.3
9.8
14.7
14.9
4.6
4.1
7.1
7.6
9.4
8.3
4.1
4.0
7.1
7.6
2.4
8.4
4.1
3.9
7.1
7.6
Tout by Exp
Tout by
Present
method
(Tin Tout)
by Exp ( C)
(Tin Tout)
by Pre ( C)
DT ( C)
Dp (%)
28.24
20.03
20.13
33.27
31.11
18.98
28.78
20.43
20.51
34.02
29.08
19.31
29.55
20.91
20.91
35.03
27.95
19.91
20.05
32.99
30.96
18.93
28.64
20.35
20.45
33.87
28.96
19.26
29.52
20.90
20.93
34.97
4.92
2.88
2.41
5.95
4.92
1.93
4.43
2.50
2.05
5.25
4.40
1.61
3.71
2.08
1.70
4.33
5.21
3.00
2.49
6.23
5.07
1.98
4.57
2.58
2.11
5.40
4.52
1.66
3.74
2.09
1.68
4.39
0.29
0.12
0.08
0.28
0.15
0.05
0.14
0.08
0.06
0.15
0.12
0.05
0.03
0.01
0.02
0.06
5.89
4.17
3.32
4.71
3.05
2.59
3.16
3.20
2.93
2.86
2.73
3.11
0.81
0.48
1.18
1.39
Dbedry-bulb temperature, C; Wbewet-bulb temperature, C; VpeVolumetric ow of process water, m3/h; VdeDeluge water volume ow rate (m3/h); veair velocity, m/s;
TineProcess water inlet temperature, C; Touteoutlet temperature, C; DT, C; DpeDiscrepancy, %.
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