Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 1298–1303

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Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Thermal performance of cross flow cooling towers in variable wet bulb temperature
Ebrahim Hajidavalloo a,*, Reza Shakeri b, Mozaffar A. Mehrabian b
a
Mechanical Engineering Department, Shahid Chamran University, Ahvaz, Iran
b
Mechanical Engineering Department, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Cooling towers are widely used in most industrial units to reject waste heat to the atmosphere. Wet tow-
Received 3 October 2008 ers are usually designed to operate in hot and dry weather conditions with narrow range of wet bulb tem-
Received in revised form 11 June 2009 perature, but many cooling towers are required to operate in weather condition with large variation of
Accepted 9 January 2010
wet bulb temperature which strongly affects the thermal performance of the towers. In this paper a con-
Available online 4 February 2010
ventional mathematical model is used to predict the thermal behavior of an existing cross flow tower
under variable wet bulb temperature and the results are compared with experimental data in various
Keywords:
operating conditions. Available fill characteristic curve of the tower is obtained to estimate its departure
Variable wet bulb
Cooling tower
from the design conditions. It is found that when the wet bulb temperature increases, the approach, range
Mathematical model and evaporation loss would increase considerably. Variation of evaporation loss versus wet bulb temper-
Thermal performance ature was estimated. Finally the effect of placing an impact separator in front of air louvers on thermal
Impact separator performance of the tower is investigated.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Cooling towers are the heat and mass transfer devices being in
widespread use. Due to their important role, different kinds of
cooling towers have been introduced to address the various de-
mands of industries. Different mathematical models have been
developed to predict the thermal behavior of wet cooling towers.
The first practical model to describe the heat and mass transfer
mechanisms in wet cooling towers was proposed by Merkel [1].
Using Merkel’s theory, most of the studies have paid more atten-
tion to analyze the counter flow towers compared to the cross flow
towers. The reasons for the lack of studies on the cross flow towers
are the widespread use of counter flow towers and also the diffi-
culty in the analysis of cross flow towers as compared to the coun-
ter flow towers. Snyder [2] applied the theory of heat exchanger
design to calculate the driving force of a cross flow tower in the
same way as was used to calculate the mean temperature differ-
ence in a cross flow heat exchanger and obtained the overall en-
thalpy transfer coefficient. He assumed a linear relationship
between the water temperature and enthalpy of saturated air. Zivi
and Brand [3] solved the differential equations numerically using a
non-linear relationship between the water temperature and en-
thalpy of saturated air. Schechter and Kang [4] applied the Zivi
and Brand’s method to more general operating conditions by rep-
resenting an exponential function to express the equilibrium rela-
tion between the water temperature and enthalpy of saturated air
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +98 611 3738532; fax: +98 611 3369684.
E-mail address: hajidae_1999@yahoo.com (E. Hajidavalloo).
at a limited range. Baker and Shryock [5] proposed an integral solu-
tion based on Merkel’s theory.
Poppe and Rogener [6] developed a new model for cooling tow-
ers which did not use the simplifying assumptions made by Mer-
kel. The critical differences between Merkel, Poppe and e-NTU
models were investigated by Kloppers and Kroger [7]. They con-
cluded that when the water outlet temperature is the only impor-
tant parameter to the tower designer, the less accurate Merkel and
e-NTU approaches can be used but when the heat transfer rates are
concerned; they give lower values than that predicted by Poppe
approach. Hayashi and Hirai [8] approximated the enthalpy of sat-
urated air by a first-order equation with respect to the water tem-
perature, and applied the cross flow heat exchanger calculations to
obtain the overall enthalpy transfer coefficient by using a chart.
Inazumi and Kageyama [9] proposed a graphical method for calcu-
lation of the enthalpy driving force in a cross flow cooling tower.
Khan and Zubair [10,11] considered the effect of Lewis number
and heat transfer resistance in the air–water interface and devel-
oped a detailed model for counter flow wet cooling towers. Halasz
[12,13] developed a general mathematical model to describe the
thermal characteristics of all types of evaporative cooling devices.
The main feature of this model is its non-dimensionality which
efficiently reduces the required parameters to analyze an evapora-
tive device. He then applied his model to predict the thermal
behavior of wet cooling towers and compared the model results
with an accurate model. Kairouni et al. [14] applied the Halasz’s
model to predict the thermal performance of cooling towers in
south Tunisia. Prasad [15] developed a numerical model for cross
flow wet cooling towers and applied the model to estimate the

0196-8904/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enconman.2010.01.005
 E. Hajidavalloo et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 1298–1303 1299

Nomenclature

_w
Av surface area of water droplets per unit volume of tower, FR flow ratio, water to air = m
_a
m
m2 m3
cw specific heat of water at constant pressure, J kg1 °C1 Subscripts
hm mass transfer coefficient, kg m2 h1 a air
H enthalpy, J kg1 av available
L length of the tower, m db dry bulb
m_ mass flow rate per square meter of the tower, i inlet
kg m2 h1 o outlet
t temperature, °C s refers to saturated air
x,y coordinates shown in Fig. 1 wb wet bulb temperature
V volume of the selected tower, m3 w water
FC fill characteristic = hmm_Awv V

departure of available fill characteristics (FCav) of the packing of a single transfer process with enthalpy difference as the driving
multi-cell cross flow cooling tower from their values at design force.
state. Unlike the analysis of counter flow tower which is one dimen-
In spite of vast application of cross flow cooling towers in indus- sional, the cross flow tower must be treated as a two dimensional
tries, there are limited investigations to address the effect of large system because there are variation of temperature and humidity
variation of wet bulb temperature on the performance of this type both in vertical and horizontal directions. Considering a differential
of cooling towers and most researches are devoted to the counter element of a cross flow cooling tower (Fig. 1), the energy balance
flow cooling towers. Moreover, since cross flow cooling towers equation inside the tower is:
have large inlet area for air as compared to counter flow cooling _ w cw dtw dx ¼ m
_ a dHa dy ¼ hm Av dxdy½Hs  Ha 
m ð1Þ
towers, therefore, more pollution, and the way of cleaning the air
before tower is very important in this type of towers. This matter where, dxdy is the volume of the element, with its width assumed
has not been discussed yet. unity.
In this study, the conventional Merkel’s model is used to ana- Rearranging Eq. (1) results in the following set of PDEs for the
lyze the thermal behavior of the tower at different wet bulb tem- variations of water temperature and air enthalpy throughout the
peratures for an existing cooling tower working in south of Iran tower:
and located in steel company in Ahvaz city. Ahvaz city has variable  
@t w
wet bulb temperature due to its closeness to the Persian Gulf in the _ w cw
m ¼ hm Av ðHs  Ha Þ ð2Þ
@y
Middle East. When the weather gets humid, the performance of
cooling towers deteriorates considerably. Experimental test was  
carried out to validate the predicted results. Moreover, impact type
@Ha
_a
m ¼ hm Av ðHs  Ha Þ ð3Þ
separator is introduced as an effective way to prevent polluted and @x
dusty air from entering the tower. The boundary conditions are:
tw ðx; 0Þ ¼ twi ð4Þ
2. Mathematical modeling
Ha ð0; yÞ ¼ Hai ð5Þ
Merkel’s model is used to investigate the behavior of the tower. The relation between water temperature and enthalpy of satu-
The basic assumptions of this model are: rated air [16] is:

1. The heat transfer resistance of the liquid film is negligible.
2. The mass flow rate of water per unit cross sectional area of the
tower is constant (neglecting the mass of evaporated water).
3. The specific heat of moist air at constant pressure is the same as
that of dry air.
4. Lewis number for moist air is unity.
Hs ¼ 4:7926 þ 2:568t w  0:029834t2w þ 0:0016657t 3w ð6Þ
The governing equations (Eqs. (2) and (3)) in conjunction with
Eq. (6) are coupled and non-linear, which should be solved simul-
taneously. Finite difference technique is used to solve the set of
governing equations to find air and water properties in each point
of the tower.

According to the Merkel’s theory, all the heat and mass transfer
3. Tower specifications and required characteristic curve
occurring at each point of the cooling tower can be treated as a

Fig. 2 shows a schematic diagram of the cooling tower, it is a

cross flow cooling tower with three cells (six cell halves). The fills
Water are splash type with rectangular cross section and made from red-
x
wood. The design conditions of the tower are listed in Table 1.
The required characteristic curve (FCr) of the tower for specified
y conditions is shown in Fig. 3. In this figure two characteristic
Air dx
dy curves are drawn, one, which is used frequently, is based on the
assumption that the inlet air is saturated at its wet bulb tempera-
ture (RH = 100%). The other one is based on real relative humidity
of inlet air (RH = 22%). As the two curves almost coincide, assuming
Fig. 1. A differential element of a cross flow cooling tower. saturated inlet air is reasonable.
1300 E. Hajidavalloo et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 1298–1303

material doesn’t follow its design curve and it is required to be ob-

Water inlet Water inlet tained experimentally. Obtaining this curve has two main
advantages:
Drift eliminators
1. Predicting the thermal behavior of the tower with varying m_w
Air inlet Air inlet and m_ a , which helps the user to find the optimum operating
Fill Fill point of the tower at present conditions.
2. Estimating the departure of FCav from design conditions, this
feature helps the user to find the percentage of degradation of
packing material, which can be used in maintenance program
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the selected tower.
of the tower.

Available fill characteristic curve for one cell-half of the tower

Table 1 has been obtained using a numerical–experimental method
Design conditions of the selected tower. described by Prasad [15]. He used measured values of two,min and
Mass flow rate of water 3429734.6 kg/h two,max in order to predict FCav of the tower, since these values
Mass flow rate of air per fan 1927932.5 kg/h are unique functions of FCav for a given set of wet bulb and inlet
Inlet water temperature 58.0 °C water temperatures. For this purpose a set of experimental data
Outlet water temperature 30.0 °C at four various operating conditions of the selected tower has been
Wet bulb temperature of inlet air 24.0 °C
obtained which is shown in Table 2.
Expected evaporation loss 5.0 %
Cell half dimensions In order to determine FCav after a period of service, Eqs. (2) and
Length 5.5 m (3) are used together with measured values of two,min and two,max. A
Height 9.6 m two-way iteration is performed, one for adjusting unknown FR and
Width 12.0 m
the other for modifying unknown FCav, until the computed results
for two,min and two,max match with their respective measured values.
Each of the temperatures two,min and two,max represent the average
of a number of measurements recorded at equidistant points on
outer and inner ends of the fill bottom. Measurement at different
values of FR, which itself is an unknown, and computing the corre-
RH=100% sponding values using the developed computer program estab-
RH=22% lishes current relationship between FR and FC. Available fill
2.5

Table 2
Measured data at four operating conditions of the tower.
FCr

twi (°C) two,min (°C) two,max (°C) twb(°C) tdb (°C) FR FC

2 55.0 24.6 29.3 22.0 37.9 0.43 2.20
55.0 26.1 30.7 21.0 39.2 0.47 1.67
55.0 27.2 32.2 21.5 41.8 0.50 1.45
52.0 28.3 33.7 23.0 46.0 0.60 1.28

1.5
2.2

0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8

.
m
FR = .w 2
ma

Fig. 3. Required characteristic curves of the tower at two different conditions of

inlet air.
1.8
FCav

4. Available fill characteristic curve (FCav)

1.6
In order to simulate the existing cooling tower, it is required to
obtain the current fill characteristic curve of the tower. Fill charac-
teristic is a non-dimensional parameter in each wet cooling tower,
which represents the overall potential of the fill to cool water and 1.4
is written as:

hm Av V
FCav ¼ ð7Þ 1.2
m_w 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6
FCav curves for different packing shapes and materials are ob- .
m
tained by fill suppliers using appropriate tests. After a length of FR = .w
ma
service, the FCav value of packing may diminish due to several rea-
sons, like fill damage and water misdistribution. Therefore, the fill Fig. 4. Available fill characteristic curve for cell-half.
 E. Hajidavalloo et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 1298–1303 1301

characteristic values obtained from the illustrated numerical- Table 3

experimental method are plotted against the respective FR for Comparing the model predictions of outlet water temperature with experimental
data at different wet bulb temperatures.
the tower in Fig. 4.
To estimate the percentage of degradation of packing character- twb tdb twi two,min two,max two,ave,exp two,ave,Merkel Error
istic from the design condition, the current value should be com- (°C) (°C) (°C) (°C) (°C) (°C) (°C) (%)

pared with the design value obtained from Fig. 3. The design 20.5 44.0 48.0 24.2 27.4 25.8 27.1 5.05
values are: FRr = 0.587, FCr = 1.92. From Fig. 4, the available fill 21.0 36.0 41.0 24.5 28.3 26.4 26.3 0.49
21.6 44.0 48.0 25.0 26.8 25.9 27.7 6.76
characteristic at design flow ratio (FRr = 0.587) is FCav = 1.285. So 22.0 42.0 48.0 24.7 28.3 26.5 27.9 5.29
the degradation of the tower is about 33%. 22.0 42.0 49.0 24.1 28.0 26.0 28.0 7.67
23.0 40.0 38.0 25.2 28.5 26.9 26.8 0.13
24.0 38.0 50.0 26.4 30.0 28.2 29.3 3.82
5. Results and discussion 26.0 38.0 42.0 29.1 33.5 31.3 29.4 6.22

After finding the existing fill characteristic of the tower, the per-
formance of the tower can be predicted at different conditions
using the mathematical model.
35
Variations of air enthalpy and water temperature through the
packing are shown in Fig. 5, which is in agreement with results re-

Water outlet temperature (°C)

ported in [5]. Hot water at temperature of 58 °C enters from the top 30
and is cooled as it falls downward. The solid lines represent con-
stant water temperatures. Air with 24 °C wet bulb temperature en-
25
ters from the left, across the OY axis, and is heated as it moves to
the right. The dotted lines show constant air enthalpies in the
tower. This figure shows that air and water properties vary in X 20
and Y directions, contrary to the counter flow tower where the
Experiment
properties only depend on Y direction.
15 Merkel
Table 3 presents the model predictions and experimental data
from cooling tower at eight various operating conditions. The rela-
tive error of the model predictions when compared with experi- 10
38 41 42 48 48 48 49 50
mental results is less than 8%. Fig. 6 shows the model predictions
Water inlet temperature (°C)
and experimental data for water outlet temperatures.
Having confirmed the accuracy of the model and cooling tower Fig. 6. Comparing the model predictions of outlet water temperature with
characteristics, we can use the model to study the effect of other experimental data at different wet bulb temperatures.
parameters on the performance of the existing cooling tower.

O X 38
Z X 0
37 FR=0.6
36 FR=0.5
FR=0.4
Water outlet temperature (°C)

35
Y
34
2
33
32
31
30
4 29
28
27
26

6 25
20 25 30 35
Wet bulb temperature (°C)

Fig. 7. Effect of ambient air wet bulb temperature on the water outlet temperature
of tower.

One of the most important parameters that should be consid-

ered in the design and operating of wet cooling towers in mixed
weather conditions, like Ahvaz climate, is the effect of wet bulb
Y temperature on tower performance. In Ahvaz climate, the maxi-
10 mum dry bulb temperature in summer approaches 52 °C, while
0 2 4
the wet bulb temperature is moderately low, around 24 °C. But
Fig. 5. Variations of air enthalpy and water temperature through the packing. sometimes this situation is changed and weather becomes humid
1302 E. Hajidavalloo et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 1298–1303

with 100% relative humidity and wet bulb temperature reaches wet bulb temperature increases. This is in agreement with the
around 35 °C. This large change in the wet bulb temperature has same result reported for counter flow cooling tower in [11].
an important effect on the tower performance and the tower does Fig. 8 shows the effect of wet bulb variations on the evaporation
not work efficiently. loss of water at different dry bulb temperatures. This figure shows
Fig. 7 shows the effect of wet bulb temperature on water outlet that increasing the wet bulb temperature, decreases the evapora-
temperature at different FRs. The figure shows that increasing the tion rate of water considerably. It also shows that increasing the
wet bulb temperature will increase the water outlet temperature. dry bulb temperature at constant wet bulbs, increases the evapora-
The rate of increase is higher as the wet bulb temperature in- tion rate. The rate of increase in the evaporation rate at different
creases. This means that the tower approach decreases as the dry bulb temperatures is almost constant as the wet bulb temper-
ature increases. Comparing these results with the evaporation loss
data at design conditions (Table 1), shows that the evaporation loss
6 at design conditions is only consistent at dry bulb temperature of
42 °C, which is not a good estimate for the tower, since the ambient
t50
db=50°C
air temperature reaches to a maximum of 52 °C with summer aver-
t46
db=46°C
Evaporation loss (% of circulating water)

5.5 age temperature of 46 °C.

+ + t42
db=42°C
The effect of wet bulb temperature on water temperature distri-
+
bution along the tower has been investigated at four hot summer
5 + days in Ahvaz and shown in Table 4 and Fig. 9. The figure shows

4.5 80
+

70
+
4 FR=0.9
60 FR=0.7
+ FR=0.5
50
3.5
Air enthalpy (kJ/kg)

+
40

30
20 25 30 35
Wet bulb temperature (°C) 20

Fig. 8. Effect of ambient air wet bulb temperature on the evaporation loss of the 10
tower.
00

Table 4 90
Effect of wet bulb on outlet water temperature at four hot summer days in Ahvaz.
80
Date Time tdb (°C) twb (°C) two,ave (°C)
2007/6/25 5:30 27.0 18.6 27.4 1 2 3 4 5
2007/7/31 6:30 31.0 19.8 28.0 X (m)
2007/7/26 7:30 31.0 27.2 31.9
2007/8/28 6:30 30.0 28.4 32.7 Fig. 10. Effect of FR on air enthalpy variations across the cell-half.

55 55
twb=28.4
28.44 FR=0.6
27.19
twb=27.2 FR=0.5
50 19.84
twb=19.8 50 FR=0.4
Water outlet temperature (°C)

Water outlet temperature (°C)

18.59
twb=18.6
45 45

40
40

35
35

30
30

25
2 4 6 8 2 4 6 8
Y (m) Y (m)

Fig. 9. Effect of wet bulb on water temperature distribution along the tower. Fig. 11. Effect of FR on temperature distribution along the cell-half.

Fig. 12. Layer of dust scale on the body and packing of the tower.
30
29
Water outlet temperature (°C)
28
27
26
25
24
38 40 42
Water inlet temperature (°C)
Fig. 13. Effect of impact separator on water outlet temperature of cooling tower.
that increasing the wet bulb temperature is more effective in the
bottom section of the tower.
Fig. 10 shows the effect of various FR on the air enthalpy across
the tower, at design conditions. The figure shows that increasing FR
will increase the air enthalpy at any position in the cooling tower.
The effect of FR on water temperature along the tower has been
shown in Fig. 11. The figure shows that the temperature of water is
increased when FR is increased. This can be explained from the fact
that an increase in FR, means that more water should be cooled for
a given tower volume. Therefore, one would expect that the surface
area required both for convection and evaporation will be reduced,
resulting in higher water outlet temperatures.
6. Effect of impact separator on tower performance
Many cooling towers working at polluted areas, suffer from
scale forming as a result of entering considerable amount of dust
E. Hajidavalloo et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 51 (2010) 1298–1303 1303
suspended in its immediate surrounding. Dust deposit on the inlet
louvers and packings of cooling tower creates a thick layer of scale
around these parts after a while as shown in Fig. 12. In order to re-
duce entering dust and suspended solids in the tower, an impact
separator was proposed to place in front of air louvers of the tower.
High collection efficiency [17], simple construction and low cost,
stable operation, low pressure drop, and easy scale up are the ma-
jor attractions of impact separators for applications in cooling tow-
ers. The effect of putting a U-shaped impact separator with 5%
reduction in air flow rate, on the outlet water temperature of the
tower has been shown in Fig. 13. This figure shows that the impact
separator has no important effect on increasing the outlet water
temperature and may be used easily in front of the towers to filter
dusty air.
7. Conclusions
A mathematical model is used to simulate the effect of any
change in operating conditions of cooling tower, especially the
wet bulb temperature, on the thermal performance of a cross flow
tower. Available characteristic curve for packing material has been
obtained using a numerical–experimental method which provides
an insight on the current performance of the tower. It is found that
increasing the wet bulb temperature, at constant dry bulb, will de-
crease the approach, range and evaporation loss in the tower con-
siderably. The evaporation rate is increased as the dry bulb
temperature increases and the rate of increase is almost constant
at different wet bulb temperatures. An impact separator could be
used as a reasonable solution to reduce the amount of suspended
solids in the air without any considerable loss in the tower
performance.
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