Thermal performance of natural draft wet cooling towers under cross-wind conditions based on experimental data and regression analysis

Abstract

Natural draft wet cooling towers are one of the most widely-used types of wet cooling towers in the large-scale power plants. In the present research, the experimental data are employed in order to investigate the heat transfer performance of natural draft counter flow wet cooling towers under cross-wind and windless conditions. In addition, influences of cross-wind velocity, inlet water temperature and water flow rate on the water temperature difference and cooling efficiency are found out. Furthermore, to have a more applicable study, regression analysis of the experimental data is utilized for the sake of developing general mathematical equations. Finally, two common parameters including root mean square error and correlation coefficient are considered to examine accuracy of the fit between experimental data and regression outputs.