CFD ANALYSIS OF COOLING TOWER WITH FLUENT SOLVER

Abstract

A Cooling tower cools the working fluid using the principle of vaporization and sensible heat transfer. In this project the effect of design variables on Natural Draft Wet Cooling Tower has been observed using CFD analysis. The aim of the current work is to analyze the cooling tower and to observe that how the cooling range of tower depends on the various design parameters. The dependency of cooling range on fills design, rain zone height, air temperature and flow rate has been observed and conceptualized. This work also aims at determining the optimum fill height, optimum rain zone height for a design specific requirement. The problem has been solved in Discrete Phase Model using Lagrangian Particle Tracking and enabling the Stochastic Model with coupled heat and mass transfer and unsteady particle tracking assuming droplet collision and droplet breakup. The results shows that the cooling range increases as the fill height and the rain zone height is increased but there is more strong dependency on fill height rather than rain zone height. It is also observed that the range of the cooling tower increases as the flow rate of water is decreased. Its variation is observed and recorded in FLUENT 6. Theoretically it is observed and it is also clear from FLUENT 6 results that for a lower temperature the saturation pressure of water is also comparatively lower and so the driving force for the evaporation i.e. the difference of the saturation pressure and vapor pressure is also lower and so is the rate of evaporation. Hence a lower cooling is observed in rain zone for a higher depth of fills. The most of the factors affecting the cooling range are analyzed, recorded and compared for different sizes of the rain zone, different heights of fills, different mass flow rate, variable air temperature and an effort has been made for the optimization of the cooling tower.