Experimental study of the application of two trickle media for inlet air pre-cooling of natural draft dry cooling towers

This paper is part two of a broader investigation into pre-cooling the air that enters natural draft dry cooling towers. Evaporative cooling of air is to some extent different from evaporative cooling of water. Two trickle media (Trickle125 and Trickle100) originally designed for evaporative cooling of water were studied in an open-circuit wind tunnel for evaporative cooling of air. Three medium thicknesses (200, 300 and 450 mm) and two water flow rates (10 and 5 l/min per m2 horizontally exposed surface area) were used in the tests. The air velocities ranged from 0.5 to 3.0 m/s. The cooling efficiency and the pressure drop of the two media were curve fitted to yield a set of correlations. The pressure drop ranges for Trickle125 and Trickle100 were 0.7–50 Pa and 0.6–41.6 Pa, respectively. The cooling efficiencies of Trickle125 and Trickle100 fell within 15.7–55.1% and 11–44.4%, respectively. Generally, media with large effective surfaces provide high cooling efficiencies and high pressure drops; there is a trade-off between cooling efficiency and pressure drop when selecting a particular medium for a specific application. The water entrainment off the media was detected with water-sensitive papers, and both media had severe water entrainment at large air velocities.