Experimental Investigation for the Thermal performance of Modified Closed Wet Cooling Tower

Abstract

Researchers and designers keenly seek to improve the performance of cooling towers because of the extensive impact on the work and efficiency of the systems concerned to these towers. For this purpose, a Closed Wet Cooling Tower (CWCT) modified with added packing was designed, manufactured and tested for cooling capacity of 9 kW in Iraq. A series of experiments was carried out at different operational and conformational parameters. Operational parameters demonstrate: air flow rate, spray water flow rate, cooling water flow rate, inlet cooling water temperature and inlet air wet bulb temperature.
Conformational parameters indicate: height of packing used and location of packing. The results showed a significant performance improvement when using packing with CWCT under the heat exchanger and above the heat exchanger as compared to CWCT. Empirical correlations are obtained to predict water film heat transfer coefficient and air-water mass transfer coefficient considering the influences of operational parameters.