Abstract

OBREGON QUINONES, Luis G.; PERTUZ, José C.  and  DOMINGUEZ, Rafael A.. Performance analysis of a laboratory scale cooling tower for different packing materials, water inlet temperature and mass flow ratio water-air. Prospect. [online]. 2017, vol.15, n.1, pp.42-52. ISSN 1692-8261.  https://doi.org/10.15665/rp.v15il.820.

In this work it was performed the design, assembling and start up of a laboratory scale cooling tower with 0.15 m side and 1.54 m high, equipped with splash type packaging made of wood, acrylic plastic, iron and aluminum, as well as a film type packing made of acrylic material. The performance of the tower was evaluated at different mass flow ratios L'/G' in the range of 0.2-1.0, liquid inlet temperature between 48-40°C and different material and geometry of the tower packing. It was obtained a non-lineal correlation of the total volumetric mass transfer coefficient Kya as a function of the different factors studied using a statistical analysis. It was observed that the performance of the cooling tower improves to high values of Kya and efficiency in the tower when increasing the relation L'/G' working with tower packing with low thermal conductivity such as wood and acrylic material, and using high values of inlet water temperature. An increase in the surface area of the tower packing to 350% results in an increase in the efficiency to approximately 30% showing the importance of making an engineering cost analysis.

Keywords : Cooling tower; performance; efficiency; non-lineal correlation; volumetric mass transfer coefficient; tower packing.

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