Simulation of Heat and Mass Transfer in the Corrugated Packing of the Counter Flow Cooling Tower

Abstract

This paper presents the simulation results of the heat and mass transfer characteristics of corrugated packing in a counter-flow cooling tower. The numerical analysis has been partially validated by comparing the experimental data from a testing apparatus of a cooling tower under the same conditions at inlet dry bulb temperature of 32.3°C, inlet wet bulb temperature of 25.2°C and inlet water temperature of 40°C. Due to the complicated configuration of the packing surface and its installation, it was not possible to measure the temperature of the air and water in the intermediate section, but only the exit air temperature and exit water temperature. It was found that the errors between the calculated and measured temperature of the exit air were less than 2.5% for the exit dry bulb temperature, less than 2.2% for the exit wet bulb temperature and for the exit water were less than 1.3% (by testing at L/G=1.800, 2.171 and 2.820). A comparison of the volumetric heat transfer coefficients derived from the experiment and the simulation using the Tchebycheff method found that all the errors were less than 4.8%. Consequently simulation can be used as a tool for studying the phenomenon of heat and mass transfer in corrugated packing.