第 35 卷第 1 期 声 学 技 术 V o l.35, No .

1
2016 年 2 月 Technical Acoustics Feb., 2016

Acoustic barrier – not a total solution to reducing

cooling towers’ noise
IU King Kwong, YEUNG Heung Ho Andrew, FENG Xue Zhen Vita
(Supreme Acoustics Research Limited; Supreme Environmental Research (Shenzhen) Ltd)

Abstract: Rapid urban development in China has created many environmental noise issues. Six large cooling towers
were located at 15 m away from a residential building and the measured noise level at the noise receiver had exceeded
the national environmental standard by 25 dB(A). Traditional noise control measures by erecting acoustic barrier was
not effective while acoustic enclosure with silencers might affect the cooling performance of the cooling towers. The
challenge of this project is not only the high demand on noise attenuation but also the minimization of pressure drop
and elimination of air ventilation short circuit problem. The authors provided a total solution to the noise and air circu-
lation problems. Acoustic enclosure with 3 m and 1.8 m long silencers for air intake and discharge was designed and
built to reduce the noise level at the NSR from 75 dB(A) to 49 dB(A). The system and product designs to improve the
acoustic and aerodynamic performance are worth for discussion.
Key words: cooling tower noise; silencer; acoustic enclosure; acoustic barrier

0 INTRODUCTION was fully complied with the National Noise Criteria

and the hot air short-circuit problem was overcome as
A landmark commercial development project in well.
Chengdu has 6 sets of cooling towers installed in out-
door cooling plant. Each cooling tower has the dimen-
sions of 3.5 m (W) x 10.5 m (L) x 4.5 m (H) with air
flow rate of 120 m3/s. Residential buildings were lo-
cated around the cooling plant, the nearest noise sensi-
tive receiver (NSR) was at 15 m from the cooling
tower. The measured noise level at 1 m away from the
building façade on 5/F was 75 dB(A) which exceeded
the National Noise Criteria significantly. The noise
emitted from the cooling towers caused extreme an-
noyance to the neighbours since it exceeded the back- Fig.1 Noise Barrier Installed at the Plant Perimeter

ground noise by over 25 dB(A). To reduce the noise

level emitting from the cooling plant, noise barrier in
height of 4 m was erected at the perimeter of the plant
(see Fig.1). However the noise level could only be
reduced by 7 dB(A) which was well below expecta-
tion. The noise barrier had also created hot air short-
circuit problem. Having made a series of investiga-
tions into the issue, the authors provided a total solu-
tion to the noise and air circulation problems as pre-
sented in the present paper. The noise barrier was de-
molished and a new design consisting of intake si-
lencers, discharge silencers and acoustic enclosure
was proposed. The measured noise level at the NSR
Received: Oct. 21, 2015; Revised: Dec. 28, 2015
Corresponding author: Iu King Kwong, E-mail:
kkiu@supremeacoustics.com
1 ORIGINAL DESIGN–NOISE
BARARRIER
The cooling tower plant was located at the base-
ment with open roof for air circulations. The six cool-
ing towers were installed at the four sides of the plant.
The hot air was discharged vertically from the top of
3
cooling towers with air flow rate of 120 m /s per each
cooling tower while the cool air was drawn sideward
from the centre of the plant room. Accordingly, the
centre of the plant was used as a shared intake open-
ing for all 6 cooling towers and the intake airflow rate
3
was 720 m /s.
To reduce the excessive noise, noise barrier in
height of 4 m was installed at the perimeter. Accord-
64 声 学
ing to ISO 9613-2, the barrier attenuation should not
be taken to be greater than 20 dB. Moreover, the noise
sources in this project were not point sources, the equ-
ation presented in the ISO 9613-2 and other simple
prediction models, such as Z. Maekawa model, was
not applicable. Estimation of the noise reduction by
installation of barrier would be far more difficult in
this case.
Furthermore, the erected barrier had increased
the hot air short-circuit problem as illustrated in Fig.2.
Fig.2 Picture showing the Air Circulation Path in Existing Cooling
Tower Plant
2 TOTAL SOLUTION
After a series of feasibility study, the design of
using acoustic enclosure and silencers was identified
to be the best solution to solve the noise problem.
However the challenge of this design was to fulfill
both the hot air short-circuit problem and the ultimate
noise reduction requirement, which is minimum 25
dB(A). Installation of silencers would induce air flow
resistance which is the pressure drop of the silencers.
To minimize the effect on the cooling load of the cool-
ing towers, the pressure drop induced by installation
of the silencers shall not be over 50 Pa.
The main noise sources of a typical cooling
tower are fan noise, water sparkling noise and motor
noise. Noise would radiate from the intake side, dis-
charge side and breakout through tower casing. The
noise contributions from each path and the corres-
ponding frequency spectra shall be measured at the
beginning of design stage. The noise level at 1 m in
front of the intake opening was 91 dB(A) while that at
2 m above the discharge opening was 86 dB(A).
To reduce the hot air short-circuit problem, the
discharge air shall be diverted away from the centre
space over the plant room. It was proposed to install
an elbow plenum on top of the discharge silencer to
divert the hot air to discharge horizontally and away
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from the cooling tower plant. By doing so, the orienta-
tion of discharge openings would be changed to face
directly to the residential building around the plant. It
was predicted that the noise level at the NSR would be
increased from 75 dB(A) to 80 dB(A). Accordingly,
the new design would require to attenuate the noise
level by 30 dB(A).
The formula to predict the noise levels at NSR is:
Lp2 = Lp1 + A + D + IL + 3
where
Lp2 is the sound pressure level at 1 m in front of
the building façade of NSR, in decibel, dB;
Lp1 is the sound pressure level in front of the air
opening, in decibel, dB;
A is the distance attenuation of sound, in deci-
bel, dB;
D is the directivity factor, in decibel, dB;
IL is the insertion loss of silencer, in decibel, dB;
The 3 dB factor is correction factor of façade ref-
lection.
It is remarked that there were 6 cooling towers
and the noise would emit from the air intake, air dis-
charge and tower casing. This is a multisource cooling
tower plant and predictions shall be conducted for
each source and path. The resultant noise levels shall
be calculated at each NSR around the plant.
It has been mentioned that elbow plenums would
be installed on top of the discharge silencers to reduce
the hot air short-circuit and inefficient heat dissipation
problem, the distance between the discharge outlets
and intake air opening would still be too close. To
overcome this problem, the height of the intake open-
ing was increased. The picture showing the air circula-
tion paths after installation of the silencers with air
plenums is shown in Fig.3.
Fig.3 Picture showing the Air Circulation Path in the Cooling Tower
Plant according to the New Design
Acoustic panels were used to build the air dis-
charge elbow plenums and air intake plenums. The
inner face of the acoustic panels was sound absorptive
which acted as lined ducts to further reduce the noise
第1期 IU King Kwong, et al：Acoustic barrier – not a total solution for reducing cooling towers’ noise
emitting from the silencers. Furthermore, the acoustic
panels, having much higher damping property than
steel sheet duct work, would eliminate the secondary
noise generated by duct vibration induced by air flow
fluctuations.
As shown in Fig.4, the noises at high frequencies
were relatively higher than the low frequency noises.
This was due to the combined noises from water spar-
kling and centrifugal fan running with blade-passing
frequency at 3.15 kHz. Typically, duct silencers would
have good insertion loss at mid-frequencies, while the
high frequency noise attenuation drops significantly
due to beaming effect. This will be explained in more
details in the next section.
Fig.4 Noise Levels Measured in front of Intake & Discharge Air
Opening
Besides the silencers, 100 mm thick acoustic pa-
nels were used to cover the remaining openings of the
cooling tower plant to reduce the noise emission.
Considering both the noise and inefficient heat
dissipation problems, a total solution was offered to
reduce the noise level at NSR to comply with the
nighttime noise criteria of 50 dB(A) as defined in GB
22337-2008.
3 PRODUCT DESIGN
As discussed in previous sections, the silencers
used in this project shall have excellent sound attenua-
tion performance at high frequencies while the aero-
dynamic performance shall be improved to reduce the
induced pressure loss.
A simple dissipative silencer consists of a straight
duct and sound absorptive lining, of circular or rec-
tangular duct cross-section and without any fittings. In
accordance with ISO 14163, the insertion loss of a
simple dissipative silencer can be described by the
following equation:
Di = Ds + Da·l
65
where
Ds is the discontinuity attenuation, in decibels,
dB;
Da is the propagation loss along the silencer, in
decibels per metre, dB/m;
l is the length of the silencer, in metres, m.
The propagation loss Da of a silencer can be ex-
pressed by Piening’s proportionality:
Da ∝ (U / S)·α
where
U is the length, in metres, m, of the duct perime-
ter lined with sound-absorbent material;
S is the cross-sectional area of the duct, in
square metres, m2;
α is the sound absorption coefficient of the lin-
ing.
As the air and sound wave pass through the air-
way of the silencer, the acoustic absorptive lining
would absorb some of the sound energy. The amount
of energy absorbed can be represented by its airflow
resistivity r, it is related to the fibre diameter and bulk
density as in the following equation:
r ∝ (η / a2)·(ρc / ρu)3/2
where
ρc is the bulk density, in kilograms per cubic
metre, kg/m3, of the compressed absorber material;
ρu is the bulk density, in kilograms per cubic
metre, kg/m3, of the uncompressed absorber material;
η is the viscosity of the gas, in newton seconds
per square metre, N·s/m2;
a is the average diameter of the fibres, in me-
tres, m.
The insertion loss of a splitter silencer is deter-
mined by the percentage of open area of the airways
between splitters in the whole cross-sectional area and
the length of silencer. At low frequencies the propaga-
tion loss increases with absorber thickness and fre-
quency. In mid-frequency range where the duct width
is the same as half of the sound wavelength, a maxi-
mum value is achieved which is inversely proportional
to the airflow resistance of the absorptive material.
The total specific airflow resistance perpendicular to
the splitter should not significantly exceed 2 kN·s/m3.
At higher frequencies the propagation loss will drop
significantly where the width of airways between
splitters is greater than half of the wavelength. This is
called ‘beaming’ effect.
To increase the sound attenuation of a silencer in
high-frequency range, the width of airway between
66 声 学
splitters should be reduced or the splitters should be
separated longitudinally and placed along the duct
with an off-set, see Fig.5.
Fig.5 Insertion Loss Di vs Frequency f and Pressure Loss Coefficient ζ
for Different Splitter Configurations
From Fig.5, both of the methods would increase
the pressure loss, but the off-set method can only pro-
vide an additional attenuation of less than 6 dB while
the pressure loss coefficient ζ was almost doubled.
After a series of estimation and consideration, the
method of reducing the width of silencer airway was
chosen to increase the sound attenuation at high fre-
quencies. The induced pressure loss shall be reduced
by designing the splitters into streamline shape.
In the final design, a 3 m long intake silencer
with 47% airway open area and 1.8 m long discharge
silencer with 33% airway open area at each discharge
opening were chosen. According to the flow rate of
cooling towers, the air face velocities at intake and
discharge silencers would be 3.9 m/s and 3.3 m/s, the
pressure loss induced by NAP Silentflo silencers at
these face velocities were tested to be 17 Pa and 26 Pa
respectively.
Fig.6 Final Construction after Installation of Silencers and Acoustic
Enclosure
4 Laboratory Test
Although the silencer performance can be pre-
dicted by simple estimation formulae, the design of
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splitter nose and tail will affect the aerodynamic per-
formance as well as the acoustic performance. Fur-
thermore, the quality of sound absorption material and
how it is installed in the splitters will lead to devia-
tions from the predicted acoustic performance. Labor-
atory test is the most accurate method to validate the
performance of silencers.
To achieve the design requirement of acoustics
and aerodynamics of the silencers, Supreme Acoustics
has been performing a lot of product designs and la-
boratory tests in accordance with the testing standard
ASTM E477 and ISO 7235. Fig.7 shows the laborato-
ry test facilities which are the silencer test rig in
length of 50 m connected into the reverberation room
for diffuse field sound pressure measurements.
The sound absorptive material in the splitters is a
major acoustic component of a silencer. Measurement
of specific airflow resistance is useful during product
development and for quality control to ensure the con-
sistency of acoustic performance of the silencers dur-
ing manufacture.
Supreme Acoustics has been conducting many
airflow resistance tests for the sound absorptive mate-
rials according to ISO 9053:1991 to ensure the quali-
ties of the silencers and for research purpose. Fig.8
shows the testing instrument.
Fig.7 Silencer Test Rig and Reverberation Room in Supreme Acous-
tics Testing Centre
第1期 IU King Kwong, et al：Acoustic barrier – not a total solution for reducing cooling towers’ noise
Fig.8 Airflow Resistance Measurement System
5 Conclusions
After construction of the complete noise control
system, the noise level at the NSR 5/F was measured
to be 49 dB(A) which complied with the national
standard. The noise control system design has also
solved the hot air ventilation short circuit problem
with pressure loss controlled within the design speci-
fication. With more product research work, laboratory
testing and experienced system design to suit each
individual project, it is confident that acoustic enclo-
sure with silencers is the best noise reduction solution
隔声屏障-不能治理冷却塔噪声
姚景光，杨香灏，冯雪珍
(盈达声学科研有限公司；盈达环科声学科研(深圳)有限公司)
摘要：现时中国大陆城市急速发展，做成大量环境噪声问题。某室外空调机房配备了六台冷却塔，与附近最近的居
民楼距离只有 15 m，测得的噪声比国标的规定高出了 25 dB(A)。传统的噪声治理是利用隔声屏障去阻挡冷却塔的噪
声，可是效果不显着，而使用隔声罩与消声器则可能会影响冷却塔运作。此项工程最大的挑战除了要做到高消声效
果外，还要解决消声器的压降与进出风短路问题。作者提供了一个整体的降噪治理和解决进出风短路的方案，最终
把居民楼的噪声由 75 dB(A)降至 49 dB(A)。此系统和产品设计非常值得讨论。
关键词：冷却塔噪声；消声器；隔声罩；隔音屏障
中图分类号：TB533 文献标识码：A
DOI 编码：10.16300/j.cnki.1000-3630.2016.01.014
67
to cooling towers and air-cooled chillers. Acoustic
barrier, being very popular for reducing traffic noise,
is not a total solution to reducing the cooling towers
noise, especially for those projects requiring more
than 10 dB(A) insertion loss.
Reference
[1] International Organization for Standardization. Acoustics - guide-
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14163: 1998.
[2] International Organization for Standardization. Acoustics - Atten-
uation of Sound during propagation outdoors – Part 2: General
method of calculation[J]. 1996, 1(1). Geneva. ISO 9613-2: 1996.
[3] American Society for Testing and Materials. Standard Test Method
for Laboratory Measurements of Acoustical and Airflow Perfor-
mance of Duct Liner Materials and Prefabricated Silencers[J].
2013, 1(1). West Conshohocken, PA. ASTM E477-13, 2013.
[4] International Organization for Standardization. Acoustics - Labo-
ratory measurement procedures for ducted silencers and air-
terminal units - Insertion loss, flow noise and total pressure loss[J].
2003, 1(1). Geneva. ISO 7235: 2003.
[5] International Organization for Standardization. Acoustics - Mate-
rials for acoustical applications - Determination of airflow resis-
tance[J]. 1991, 1(1). Geneva. ISO 9053: 1991.
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[7] Guobiao Standards. Emission standard for community noise[J].
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文章编号：1000-3630(2016)-01-0063-05