Nozzle arrangement effect on cooling performance of saline water spray cooling

Abstract

Hybrid cooling is a promising technology to improve the performance of natural draft dry cooling towers. This article presents a computational fluid dynamics study analysing the use of saline water in a spray assisted natural draft dry cooling tower. A multicomponent Discrete Phase Model in ANSYS FLUENT is modified, using the porosity and final shape of dried crystals, and applied for the simulation of solid containing droplets in a spray. To investigate the influence of nozzle arrangements on the cooling performance of the sprays, a group of arrangements using six cone nozzles are considered, and the most efficient arrangement is presented. This paper provides new fundamental understanding in the area of saline spray cooling and shows that nozzle arrangement may improve the cooling efficiency by 2.9%.