PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT OF A COUNTER FLOW INDUCED DRAFT COOLING TOWER

THERMAL ENGINEERING

An evaporative cooling tower is a direct contact heat exchanger that transfer heat from circulating water to the surrounding atmosphere. Warm water from the heat source is pumped to the top of the cooling tower and then it flows down through the plastic or wooden shells also known as packing material or fills. As it falls downward across the fills, water is broken into small droplets. Simultaneously, air is drawn in through the air inlet louvers at the base of the cooling tower which travels upward through the wet deck fill opposite to the water flow. Hence evaporation of hot water occurs and the water is cooled down until it reaches to the below placed cold water basin. In present study, Taguchi method of optimization is used to optimize various cooling tower performance parameters such as mass flow rate of water, mass flow rate of air and different pitch sized packing material. The main aim of the study is to optimize these performance factors in order to achieve maximum cooling effect in the counter flow induced draft cooling tower. The experiments were planned based on Taguchi’s L9 orthogonal array .The trail was performed under different inlet conditions of flow rate of water, air and fill pitch size. Signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression were carried out in order to determine the effects of process parameters on cooling tower effectiveness and to identity optimal factor settings. Finally confirmation test was carried out to verify the reliability of Taguchi method for optimization of counter flow induced draft cooling tower performance with sufficient accuracy.

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