A Matlab-Based Program for the Design And Simulation of Wet Cooling Towers

Abstract

Computer based programs for education in chemical engineering has become an essential component to complete the program educational objectives and reach the student outcomes. There is a long list of chemical process simulators used as complement to traditional courses on process modeling, however, the field of chemical engineering cover a broad range of areas that make difficult the creation of a robust program that involve all the courses mainly the unit operations which is the heart of this discipline. The experience with these courses shows that there is still need for enhancement when trying to transfer the theoretic knowledge to computational trainings. In order to follow this line of transferring knowledge it is presented a registered application of a GUI in Matlab called CTw-UA v1.0 focused in humidification for the design of cooling towers, using the mass transfer fundamental equations for the design of cooling towers presented in highly relevant documents and popular academic books with some empirical information of different packings used in the industry. The operating conditions set by the user are the inlet and outlet temperatures of the liquid, the liquid flow, the dry and wet bulb temperatures of the inlet air, the type of packing and the relation (L/Gmin), and the outputs in the program are the number of decks of the packings, the efficiency of the tower, the air flow, the temperature profile of the air along the tower plotting the Mickley diagram, and the column dimensions, height and diameter. It was obtained the effect of the packing and inlet air conditions in the dimension of the tower, the variation of the height of the tower as a function of the outlet and inlet liquid temperatures for different packings and the variation of the efficiency and height of the tower as a function of the outlet liquid temperature. The software, which was accepted very well by a population of 90 students, was evaluated statistically in terms of clarity, precision and relevance with the application of a t test with a significance level of 5%.