Simple method for estimation of performance characteristics of cooling towers

Abstract

Cooling towers are among the most important and biggest heat and mass transfer devices that are in widespread use. They are commonly used in large cooling systems to reject the waste heat, such as buildings to atmosphere via a water loop between two devices. In this work, a simple to use predictive tool is presented to estimate the performance characteristics of various types of cooling towers as a function of cold water temperature, wet bulb temperature and temperature difference range. The performance characteristics of various types of towers will vary with height, fill configuration and flow arrangement (cross-flow or counterflow). However, these factors have been taken into consideration in the present work while developing a predictive tool. The proposed predictive tool works well for cold water temperatures ranging between 15 and 40°C and wet bulb temperatures ranging from 10 to 30°C. The study shows that the proposed method has good agreement with the available reliable data in the literature. The average absolute deviation between reported data and the proposed predictive tool is ~3%. The proposed method is superior owing to its accuracy and clear numerical background, wherein the relevant coefficients can be retuned quickly if more data become available in the future.