Numerical Investigation of Cross-Flow Water Cooling Towers

Abstract

In this study, thermal performance of the forced cross-flow water cooling tower is numerically investigated by using the commercial computational fluid dynamics software ansys-cfx. The temperature variation between inlet and outlet of the water, namely, process water temperature, is the main extracted result of simulations. Additionally, the cooling range (CR) that is the difference between inlet water temperature and outlet water temperature is the second representative result of the analysis. The effect of air velocity (Va), water droplet diameter (dw), and water temperature at the inlet of tower (Tw) are the variables that are considered to be the effective design parameters on the process temperature of the water. The process water temperature decreases, but the cooling range increases when the air velocity increases. When the inlet water temperature increases, the process water temperature and the cooling range also increase. On the other hand, the process water temperature decreases with the decreasing diameter of water droplets.