Thermal Analysis of Cooling Tower using Computational Fluid Dynamics

International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development (IJTSRD)
Volume 6 Issue 2, January-February 2022 Available Online: www.ijtsrd.com e-ISSN: 2456 – 6470
@ IJTSRD | Unique Paper ID – IJTSRD49160 | Volume – 6 | Issue – 2 | Jan-Feb 2022 Page 100
Thermal Analysis of Cooling Tower using
Computational Fluid Dynamics
P Chandra Shekhar1
, Sudhir Singh Rajput2
1
Research Scholar, 2
Assistant Professor,
1,2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Raipur Institute of Technology, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India
ABSTRACT
The automotive, chemical and other plants employs use of cooling
tower dissipating heat from water in to the atmosphere. The
performance of cooling tower can be enhanced by various water
modelling and energy consumption analysis. The current research
reviews previous studies conducted in determination of effectiveness
of cooling tower subjected to different operating conditions. The
analytical equations are presented along with experimental data on
evaluation and improvement of cooling tower performance.
KEYWORDS: Cooling tower, thermal analysis
How to cite this paper: P Chandra
Shekhar | Sudhir Singh Rajput "Thermal
Analysis of Cooling Tower using
Computational Fluid Dynamics"
Published in
International Journal
of Trend in
Scientific Research
and Development
(ijtsrd), ISSN: 2456-
6470, Volume-6 |
Issue-2, February
2022, pp.100-103, URL:
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Copyright © 2022 by author(s) and
International Journal of Trend in
Scientific Research and Development
Journal. This is an
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1. INTRODUCTION
The cooling tower is one of the key components in
industries such as power generation including
renewable [1] geothermal and solar thermal [2] and
non-renewable [3] power plants, chemical and
petrochemical plants [4], refrigeration and air-
conditioning plants. Thermoelectric generation and its
required cooling are responsible for approx. 10% of
the total water demand in the world. The role of the
cooling tower is dissipating heat from the hot stream
of the process into the air in power plants, district
cooling plants, and cooling systems. To address the
water scarcity for a sustainable future (in smart cities)
cooling towers have to receive special attention.
Replacing the evaporation of water for dissipating the
heat with another method, or capturing the vapor, or
both are the ideas to support water conservation.
Considering several cooling towers that are installed
already highlights the importance of capturing the
vapor and/or reducing evaporation studies. The
design of cooling towers focuses on the water
distribution system, fill, and drift elimination. The
water distribution system introduces and spreads the
process water as evenly over the fill through the use
of water canals and nozzles. The fill is a system of
packing that delays the fall of water and improves
heat transfer, and drift eliminators at the air exit
change the direction of airflow to reduce the volume
of water transported out. Within cooling towers,
water is lost through three main modes. These modes
are drift, blowdown, and evaporation. Drift is the
water losses associated with wind, evaporation loss
occurs due to the heat transfer taking place, and
blowdown is utilized to avoid the buildup of minerals
and sediments within the cooling water that may
damage other components within the system, and.
blowdown is also a byproduct of the evaporation
processes increasing the concentration of the minerals
[5].
IJTSRD49160

International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and Development @ www.ijtsrd.com eISSN: 2456-6470
Figure 1: The schematic of different types of wet
cooling towers
Wet cooling towers are also categorized by the
movement of water and air inside of the cooling
tower as follows:
1. Crossflow towers: air flows horizontally across
the falling water as it shows in Figure 1 (b) and
(d),
2. Counterflow: the upward airflow that directly
opposes the downward flow of the water
providing which is shown in Figure 1 (a) and (c)
[19].
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
Klopperset al. [6] have worked on development of
empirical equation for determination of efficiency of
cooling tower. When the outlet air from the cooling
tower was saturated, Merkel and e-NTU models were
capable of predicting the temperature of that, while
the Poppe model did not need any assumption for
estimation of the outlet air temperature from the
cooling tower.
Ayoubet al. [7] When the draft in the cooling tower
was the same, the outlet water temperature from the
cooling tower in the three models were the same. A
small difference in the outlet water temperature from
the cooling tower was observed in Merkel and Poppe
models over the outlet air from the cooling tower
since outlet air assumed saturated in the Merkel
model.
M Rothet. al. [8]have worked in development of
water evaporation rate. The water evaporation rate in
the cooling tower was underestimated by the Merkel
model compared to the Poppe model. Since
evaporation was an important factor in designing the
hybrid cooling towers, using the Poppe model was
preferred.
Klopperset. al. [9] have proposed a modelbased on a
reliable equation to determine the Lewis factor value.
While in the Merkel model the Lewis factor was a
constant number of 1. Most researchers believed that
Merkel's assumption was not accurate since the Lewis
factor was between 0.6 to 1.3.
Jaber and Webb [10] put forward the number of heat
transfer unit (ε-NTU) model, which provides another
method for the calculation of the cooling tower. It is
worth noting that the model, like the Merkel enthalpy
model, ignores the effect of water evaporation.
Gan [11, 12] put forward several mathematical
models. These models take into account the mass,
momentum, and energy transfer simultaneously.
These models are based on the Merkel theory and its
modified form, and they can analyse the thermal
processes of different cooling towers. They also
carried out numerical simulation analysis of closed
cooling towers and obtained an earlier relatively
mature simulation experience.
Ronak Shah, TruptiRathore[13] had done thermal
design of industrial cooling tower and determined the
complete performance parameters with given inlet
and outlet conditions and considering several possible
losses. they investigated that cooling tower
performance increases with increasing air flow rate
and cooling tower characteristic decreases with
increase in water to air mass ratio.
Plasencia et al [14] developed a new model which is
based on transfer of heat and mass for IEC; few
simplifications were incorporated to make this model
as user friendly used for analysis of energy as well as
adaption of system.
Camargo et al [15] presented an operational concept
for both type of cooling systems and generated
equations for mass and heat transfer between warm
air and wetted media. Above researches and
mathematical models has been limited up to the
conditioning of air coming out of the coolers, and to
increase the saturation efficiency or effectiveness of
cooler; however, the use of cooled water stored in
tank was not at all explored. This gap of not using the
coolness of cooler water has been identified as a
research gap and thus becomes the main objective of
the present work.
Pushpa B. S, VasantVaze, P. T. Nimbalkar [16] have
evaluated performance of cooling tower in thermal
power plant by varying water inlet temperature, air
inlet temperature and mass flow rate of water. They
found that efficiency of cooling tower increases by
increasing water inlet temp, air inlet temperature and
decreases by increasing mass flow rate.

S. ParimalaMurugaveni, P. Mohamed Shameer[17] in
their research have analyzed a forced draft cooling
tower by varying air inlet parameters and by varying
air inlet angles in horizontal and vertical direction and
both. The cooling tower model has been prepared in
solid works 2013 and it has been meshed using
icemCFD 14.5 software and meshed models have
been analyzed using fluent software. On the basis of
temperature contours obtained, they found that outlet
temperature of water increases as the air inlet angle
increases which will lead to decrease in effectiveness.
Manoj Kumar Chopra, Rahul Kumar[18] in their
research carried out the cfd analysis on a counter flow
cooling tower reference model. the model has been
prepared in Creo and meshed and analyzed through
Ansys 12.1. The analysis is carried out by
simultaneous varying of three parameter inlet water
flow rate, inlet air rate and fills porosity and applied
taguchi method to carry out the optimization. They
investigated that cooling tower gives best
performance at lower mass flow rate of water, high
mass flow rate of air and fill porosity of 50%.
3. CONCLUSION
The performance of cooling towers depends upon
various operational and design parameters. The
empirical equations are presented by various scholars
which can accurately predict the efficiency of cooling
towers under different operating conditions which
includes air inlet temperature, water inlet temperature
and mass flow rate. The present study elaborated the
history of energy-water modeling methods of cooling
towers through the Markel, the Poppe, and the
Effectiveness–(NTU) Models since water and energy
are deeply connected in cooling towers.
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