Performance enhancement of cooling towers in thermal power plants through energy conservation

This paper provides an analysis of induced draft cooling tower (CT) performances. The present heat transfer effectiveness of the cooling towers is in the range of 46.4 - 50.9 %. The overall CT fan efficiencies are varying between 25.9 - 42.8 %. These effectiveness and efficiencies are lower due to design deficiencies, hesitation in adopting new technology, etc. In this paper, detailed performance results of replacing the existing glass reinforced plastic (GRP) blade by the modern technology fibre reinforced plastic (FRP) blades is presented. The operational optimization of cooling tower is also discussed in detail. The effectiveness of cooling towers is improved to 71.7 - 80.7 % and the efficiency is improved to 39.5 - 64.2 % by replacing the existing GRP fan blade by the modern technology FRP blades. This technology up-gradation shows the reduction of auxiliary power of cooling tower by 30 - 35 %. The specific energy consumption (SEC) of fan has reduced. The automation of CT fan operation reduces the energy consumption.