Performance Enhancement of Induced Draft Counter Flow Wet Cooling Tower with Different Types of Modified Shaped Fill Assembly

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental analysis of heat transfer using different shaped fills in a counter flow induced draft cooling tower. The main objective is to determine and compare the characteristics of the cooling tower using newly shaped (splash and film) fills and the regular used fills. The newly shaped fills are inverted U-shape cross-sectional splash fill and film fill with ripple plates. The obtained results show that the performance is affected by the type and arrangement of the fills. The modified splash fill has increased the wetted surface area of fill within the same volume compared to regular fills. The film fill with ripple plates has been used such that water from the distribution device ran down on both surfaces of each ripple plate. By the arrangement of ripple plates, cooling loss by premature dropping off of water has been avoided. Performance factors like range, approach, effectiveness, cooling capacity, evaporation loss, percent loss are calculated from collected data for newly shaped fills, and regular shaped fills. It is observed that range, effectiveness, and cooling capacity increases with both newly shaped fills. When ripple plated film fill is used; range, effectiveness, and cooling capacity is found highest among the different shape of fills used in this study. At the same time evaporation loss and percent loss are found lowest for inverted-U shaped splash fill.