Study on the Effect of Blade Angle on the Performance of a Small Cooling Tower

Abstract

This paper presents the effect of blade angles on the packing characteristic curves of a small cooling tower on the site experimental data. The volumetric heat transfer coefficient (KaV/L) can be illustrated graphically and varied with the water to air flow ratio (L/G) for the blade angles of 59°, 67 °, 75°, and 83°, respectively. The curves can be constructed by the experimental data from the cooling tower testing in accordance with the procedure of CTI standard. It was found that the characteristic curves can be represented in the form of KaV/L = C(L/G)^-n in the different range of L/G for each blade angle. Finally, it was found that the cooling tower can operate under all the given approaches (5°C, 6°C, 7°C and 8°C) at the blade angle of 67° by maintaining the cooling range of 5°C, wet bulb temperature of 26°C, and water flow rate of 3.9 m³/h.