BUILD SIMUL (2015) 8: 179 – 188

DOI 10.1007/s12273-014-0201-8

Evaluation of exhaust performance of cooling towers in a super

high-rise building: A case study

Research Article
Zhi Zhuang1 (), Chun-Ming Hsieh2, Bin Wang3

1. Department of Architecture, Green Building and New Energy Research Center, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, 200092 Shanghai, China
2. Department of Urban Planning, Green Building and New Energy Research Center, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, 200092 Shanghai, China
3. College of Mechanical & Energy Engineering, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, 200092 Shanghai, China

Abstract Keywords
The exhaust performance of a cooling tower placed in the interior space of a building is crucial super high-rise building,
due to limited space and stochastic ambient wind conditions. Improper design of the cooling tower cooling tower,
could lead to a reduction in thermal efficiency and could also deteriorate the operational computational fluid dynamics (CFD),
performance of the chillers. In this paper, the exhaust performance of cooling towers in a super exhaust recirculation ratio
high-rise building considering both side exhaust and interlayer exhaust methods is investigated
using CFD simulations. The results show that the exhaust performance of cooling towers under
Article History
Received: 10 June 2014
interlayer exhaust is better than that under side exhaust. However, the exhaust recirculation
Revised: 13 September 2014
phenomenon of the cooling towers on the windward side caused by outdoor wind is still obvious
Accepted: 16 September 2014
because the outdoor wind speed is low. The total pressure differences between the inlet and
outlet of the tower units under interlay exhaust become larger with increases in wind speed in
© Tsinghua University Press and
each district. The fan total head should be carefully determined to overcome the surplus pressure Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
drop caused by the wind. This study helps to guide other similar cases utilizing the interior space 2014
of buildings for the cooling towers.

1 Introduction in practical applications, exhaust recirculation in the cooling

Air-conditioning systems in buildings are the major electricity
users, accounting for almost half of the total energy con-
sumption, especially in super high-rise buildings. Cooling
chillers with evaporative cooling towers have been widely
towers often occurs. The recirculation in cooling towers is
defined as an adulteration of the air entering the tower by a
portion of the air leaving the tower. This adulteration by
the exhaust air raises the wet-bulb temperature of the
entering air above that of the ambient air, reducing the

used for central air-conditioning in commercial buildings.
It is essential to maintain and improve the efficiency of
cooling towers in buildings for energy savings and normal
operation of air-conditioning systems.
Cooling towers are economic and effective devices for
heat rejection using direct evaporative cooling technology,
which extracts wasted heat from air-conditioning equipment
in buildings (Xuan et al. 2012). In common mechanical
draft cooling towers, fans at the outlets are used to draw air
through the towers. The wet-bulb temperature of the entering
air at the inlet of the cooling tower is one of the key factors
affecting cooling tower performance, which is influenced
by the wind environment around the cooling tower. However,
E-mail: zhgzhi@gmail.com
Indoor/Outdoor Airflow
overall tower performance. It has been found that a mere
two-degree Fahrenheit increase in the entering wet-bulb and Air Quality
temperature could result in a degradation of 12%–16% in
tower capability, and for optimum cooling tower performance
and enhanced safety, a 0.5 to 2℉ recirculation allowance
has been loaded on the design for the wet-bulb temperature
(Bhatia 2001; Evapco Bulletin 1999; Wang 2010).
The exhaust recirculation that occurs in cooling towers is
caused by many things, most of which are due to the limited
space surrounding cooling towers or improper tower design.
For example, some cooling towers are installed in wells or
located adjacent to the walls of their serving buildings due
to limited space. This will cause unfavorable flow interaction
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nearby the cooling towers, resulting in the recirculation of
the hot, moist exhaust air. In addition, in order to pursue
architectural esthetics, decorative enclosures are likely utilized
to surround cooling towers. These can easily cause exhaust
recirculation, especially when the enclosures are higher than
the cooling towers themselves. Furthermore, when a number
of cooling towers are installed centrally, such as on the top
of a building, the exhaust from upstream cooling towers may
be drawn into the inlets of downstream cooling towers,
which can aggravate recirculation (Lee et al. 2014).
During recent years, with the development of computer
technology, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been
widely applied as a method to guide engineering design due
to its advantages of being quick, accurate and effective,
low-cost, etc. (Patankar 1980). It can be used to predict the
airflow distribution around buildings and air conditioning
systems (Liu et al. 2013; Rahmatmand et al. 2014; Hsieh et al.
2007, 2011). The CFD tool assists with cooling tower layout
and air inlet positioning to improve the exhaust performance
of the cooling tower.
There have been some numerical research works
conducted to evaluate the effects of wind on the exhaust
performance of cooling towers without surrounding
enclosures, such as in power plant applications. For example,
Becker et al. (1989) adopted a numerical model to study the
plume recirculation in a cooling tower. It was found that
the intake velocity, discharge velocity, crosswind speed and
wind direction, etc. had significant influences on the amount
of recirculation. Gu et al. (2007) reported that the wind
perpendicular to a tower’s major axis was significantly
correlated with the recirculation. In addition, field mea-
surements indicated that recirculation increased as the wind
speed increased until a maximum value of recirculation
occurred, and then further increases in the wind speed
resulted in a decrease in the recirculation of the tower under
consideration. Al-Waked and Behnia (2006) investigated
numerical heat and mass transfer inside a natural draft wet
cooling tower under different operating and crosswind
conditions. Meroneya (2006) proposed a protocol to predict
plume rise and surface drift deposition from mechanical
draft cooling towers and presented a specific urban cooling
tower situation with and without the urban buildings
surrounding a cooling tower complex. Moon et al. (2008)
compared the averaged reentering rates of all the cooling
towers on a building roof in Seoul, Korea according to two
wall types to study the effect of the intake outdoor air
louver on the recirculation rates using a numerical method.
Williamson et al. (2008) presented a two-dimensional
axisymmetric two-phase simulation of the heat and mass
transfer inside a natural draft wet cooling tower with
particular emphasis on determining the extent of non-
uniformities across the tower.
Zhuang et al. / Building Simulation / Vol. 8, No. 2
In a building using cooling towers for chillers, the best
place to locate any cooling tower is on the roof. However,
in practice, there are many applications in which the cooling
towers are placed on a roof with surrounding enclosures,
and some studies on recirculation in cooling towers with
surrounding enclosures have been reported to guide tower
design. For example, Kaiser et al. (2005), Al-Waked and
Behnia (2007) and Lee et al. (2014) conducted numerical
simulations of wind environments around the cooling towers
in buildings and proposed technical measures to improve
both the effective operation and the proper layout of these
cooling towers. Ge et al. (2012) evaluated the amount of
recirculation in a counter-flow cooling tower under con-
ditions of different enclosure structures and crosswind
conditions using a CFD simulation and investigated the
effects of recirculation in cooling towers on the energy
performance of a chilling plant and plume potential.
Currently, the presence of super high-rise buildings in
China is increasing rapidly due to the significant space
efficiency and financial benefits associated with these
structures (Sev and Özgen 2009). There were almost 1000
super high-rise buildings in China by the end of 2012. The
large amount of building area results in the need for
large-capacity HVAC units in these buildings. However,
the roof space for placing the cooling towers in super high-
rise buildings is usually not adequate. The utilization of the
interior space of buildings for installing the cooling towers
has been attracting more and more attention. However, there
are restrictions associated with limited space and stochastic
outdoor wind, and because few studies have focused on the
exhaust performance of a cooling tower placed in the interior
space of a super high-rise building, the exhaust performance
of such cooling towers needs more investigation. It is
necessary to simulate and evaluate the exhaust performance
of these cooling towers so as to provide guidelines for
optimizing the overall design plans for cooling towers. This
paper discusses the exhaust performance of a cooling tower
placed in the interior space of a super high-rise building
using a case study. The research objective of this paper is to
analyze recirculation phenomena caused by a cooling tower
cluster installed in the interior space of a super high-rise
building. The research findings also help to guide other
similar cases.
2 Case descriptions
2.1 Project overview
This project is a newly built super high-rise green building
located in Nanjing, China. With a building height of 370 m,
it consists of three tower buildings (named towers A, B and