Technical and economic assessment of the possibility of using a thermal and moisture protection screen to increase the resistance of the reinforced concrete cooling tower shell to operational conditions

Abstract

During the operation of chimney-type evaporative cooling towers which are made of monolithic reinforced concrete, the shell is exposed to various aggressive environmental influences and the carried-away part of the recycled process water leading to its premature destruction. This article illustrates a method of protecting the shell tower of a reinforced concrete cooling tower from the aggressive effects of the operating environment using a thermal and moisture protection screen design – a ventilated curtain wall with a cladding of fiberglass sheets. By the finite element method, using the ANSYS PC, a calculated analysis of temperature values and air velocity in the air gap was performed, resulting in the geometry of the air gap. To assess the overall change in the percentage of reinforcement, the corresponding strength calculations of the cooling tower shell were made with and without a thermal and moisture protection screen. Subsequently, the corresponding technical and economic analysis of the proposed design option was carried out. As a result the use of thermal moisture protection screen allows significantly redact capital costs during the construction of new cooling towers and decrease expenses for periodic major repairs in the operational cycle, thereby increasing the durability of the cooling tower.