Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

Cooling towers are widely used to dissipate the low-grade heat of thermo-electric power plants, chemical and petrochemical process industries, and refrigeration and air conditioning plants. Wet cooling tower requirements in the U.S. are about 3 times larger than all domestic water consumption. During cold winter months, wet cooling tower also produce visible plumes of condensed steam above the tower which can pose threats to agriculture and the transportation industries (air and ground) due to reduced visibility and even ice formation on neighbouring roads. Increased regulations on water consumption and plume visibility, combined with the requirement to develop power plants in more arid conditions where a dependable source of make-up water is unavailable, as it is typically the case for solar thermal and geothermal energy applications, requires engineers to develop tools to design improved cooling tower technologies. * Numerical modeling and optimization of wet, and especially hybrid cooling towers, has not been the topic of intense research. Hybrid towers combine dry cooling, which do not exploit evaporative cooling, with wet cooling in order to reduce water requirements and visible plumes. In this proposal, analytical and numerical simulation tools to study wet and hybrid cooling towers will be developed. Research will focus on analytical tools for the fill and plume zone, which are critical to both wet and hybrid towers, and numerical tools for the fill and the entire tower. Numerical tools are necessary to study inlet geometries, fill operation under cross-flow, and environmental conditions. The numerical tools will be integrated with optimization algorithms to be able to design optimal cooling towers that limit power consumption and water make-up requirements. Optimal design will be tested experimentally at facilities that will be developed at the University of Alberta. The aim of the project is to provide the cooling tower industry in Canada, and in particular International Cooling Towers Inc., with the numerical tools and highly qualified personnel required to continue to grow and contribute to the Canadian economy.*