Experimental evaluation of coupled heat and mass transfer in geothermal water cooling tower

Abstract

This research aims to study for the first time the thermal behavior of counter flow cooling tower using low temperature groundwater source for air cooling in domestic and agriculture fields under Kerbala climate. The thermal behavior of both water and air was analyzed experimentally in term of their temperatures for different mass flow rates with one type of packing. The experiments were conducted between 27 April and 12 June 2017. During these five weeks, the outdoor temperature and the average borehole water temperature at depth of 9 m ranges were 28 °C to 42°C and 22 °C to 26°C respectively. The analyses have shown that the evaporative cooling tower used in the present study provides conditioned air in or very close to the comfortable levels. Also, the study has shown that the effectiveness of the evaporative cooling tower is basically affected by airstream velocity.