Cooling Tower - Heat Transfer

Heat Transfer Engineering
Thermodynamics

The typical function of a cooling tower is to cool the water of a steam power plant by air that is brought into direct contact with the water. The water is mixed with vapor that diffuses from the condensate into the air. The formation of the vapor requires a considerable removal of internal energy from the water; the internal energy becomes "latent heat" of the vapor. Heat and mass exchange are coupled in this process, which is a steady-state process like the heat exchange in the ordinary heat exchanger.

Wooden cooling towers are sometimes employed in nuclear facilities and in factories of various industries. They generally consists of large chambers loosely filled with trays or similar wooden elements of construction. The water to be cooled is pumped to the top of the tower where it is distributed by spray or wooden troughs. It then falls through the tower, splashing down from deck to deck. A part of it evaporates into the air that passes through the tower. The enthalpy needed for the evaporation is taken from the water and transferred to the air, which is heated while the water cools. The air flow is either horizontal due to wind currents (cross flow) or vertically upward in counter-flow to the falling water. The counter-flow is caused by the chimney effect of the warm humid air in the tower or by fans at the bottom (forced draft) or at the top (induced flow) of the tower. Mechanical draft towers are more economical to construct and smaller in size than natural-convection towers of the samecooling capacity.