Comparative Study on the Wedge-Shape Gap Column Cooling Characteristics and the Usual

Abstract

As the key heat transfer element of natural draft dry cooling towers, the columnar cooling tube bundle radiator is composed of four rows pipe or six rows pipe, and usually arranged as per delta, which would induce a large vortex around the delta under crosswind conditions, and then impact the cooling performance of cooling deltas and that of the total Tower. To overcome this shortage, this study proposed a cooling column with a gap between the upstream pipes and downstream pipes in one cooling column, which can introduce a stream of air jet flow into the columnar cooling tube bundle and then impact the aerodynamic field of the tube bundle and the corresponding cooling delta. A three-dimensional numerical model has been established to compare and study the cooling characteristics of the cooling columns with wedge-shape gap and the usual. The results show that the wedge gap can increase the heat transfer coefficient of the radiator and decrease its flow resistance coefficient. At 7 m/s crosswind, the outlet water temperature of dry tower by using the usual radiator is 36.46 °C, while that is 34.23 °C for dry cooling tower with wedge radiator.