A proposed heterogeneous distribution of water for natural draft dry cooling tower to improve cooling efficiency under crosswind

Crosswind can significantly affect the cooling performance of natural draft dry cooling towers. In this study, a heterogeneous distribution of water has been proposed to increase the cooling performance of the tower under crosswind. This idea is based on the fact that under wind condition, the mean values of convective heat transfer coefficients at the windward radiators are more than that of the leeward ones. Therefore, the windward radiators may be worthy to get higher percentages of the hot circulative water in comparison to the leeward faces. In the present research work, CFD method has been used to evaluate this proposal. It has been shown that the improvement compared to the usual uniform regime, under the proposed heterogeneous distribution of water is 1.67(%) at the investigated wind velocity.