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LECTURE 11

COOLING TOWERS

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Steam Condenser
Type of heat Exchanger (NTU and LMTD method to design and
analysis)
Condenses steam coming out from steam turbine

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Steam Condenser
Advantages :
To reduce turbine exhaust pressure (see next slide)
100 C and1 bar to 30 C and 0.074 bar

Increase in turbine work

To recover high quality feed water

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Steam Condenser

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Condenser Types
Direct contact type condenser
Spray condenser
Barometric condenser
Jet condenser

Surface condensers
Shell and tube type

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Spray condenser
Spray condensers are optimally designed as per the air / vapour load
and velocity to avoid pressure losses and better condensation. A
spray condenser is used for the condensation of humid water vapor
by direct contact with water. The inlet water is at a temperature less
than the dew point of air in the chamber
Cooling water is sprayed into the steam
Steam, by mixing directly cold water, gets condensed
Circulating flow is much larger than steam flow

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Mass Balance

Energy Balance
Steam Jet Air
Ejectors

Cooling water to
steam rati0
> 1 , needs more circulating water than steam flow
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Barometric condenser
Cooling water is made to fall in a series of
baffles to expose lager surface area for the
steam fed from below to come in direct contact
Steam condenses and the mixture falls in a
tailed pipe
by virtue of its static head, the tail pipe
compresses the mixture to atmospheric
pressure

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Jet type Condenser
Height of tail pipe is reduced by
replacing it with a diffuser.

Diffuser helps raising pressure in


short distance than a tail pipe

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Surface Condensers
Mostly used in power plant
Shell and tube type heat exchangers
Cooling water through tube and steam condenses in shell
Single pass to two pass: For same velocity, size and no tubes, single
pass requires more than twice the water flow and four times the
pumping power. It increase the water temperature by half and thus
lower condenser pressures.

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Surface Condensers
Shell and Tube Heat Exchanger

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Surface Condensers
Single vs two pass

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Condenser Efficiency

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Closed Feed Water Heaters
Shell and tube heat exchangers
Small condensers, operates at higher pressures
Steam in shell and feed water in tubes
Low pressure (LP) and high pressure (HP) heaters
Desuperheater, condensing zone and sub cooling zone
Subcooling or drain cooling
Drain cooler when it is located out side of shell
Vertical or horizontal

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Open Feed water Heaters
Deaerator (remove air and non condensing gases, same as direct type
condensers)
Direct mixing
Spray type, tray type deaerators, combined spray trap deaerators

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Deaerator/Open FWH
Air leaks through flanges
Some come along steam
They affect the condenser
performance
Reduces heat transfer
considerably
Reduces the vacuum and
increases the turbine exhaust
pressure and thus reducing the
turbine output
A deaerator is a device that is
widely used for the removal of
oxygen and other dissolved gases
from the feedwater 22
Circulating water systems
Circulating water system supplied cooling water to the turbine
condensers
Heat is rejected to environment
Once through system
Closed loop system (normally used in power plants)

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Once through system
When there is large source of water
Lake, river or ocean.

Discharged back to source.

More efficient, cause more thermal


pollution.

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Once through system

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Closed loop system
Warm water is passed through a
cooling device like a cooling
tower or spray pond.

Natural body of water is still


necessary nearby to supply
makeup water replace the loss
due to evaporation (evaporate
cooling).

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Spray pond Example
Mount Storm Lake is a 1,200 acres (4.9 km2) cooling pond for a power
plant in Grant County,
West Virginia.

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Wet Cooling Towers operating in Closed mode

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Cooling Towers
Integral part of re-circulating water system in Power Plants.
Works on evaporate cooling principle.
Types : Wet type or dry type & natural
or forced.
Cooling towers cool the warm water
coming from condenser and feed them
back to condenser

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Natural
Forced draught and Forced
wet cooling Cooling
towers (height: Towers
34 meters) and natural
draft wet cooling tower (height: 122 meters) in Westfalen, Germany.
Natural draught
200 m !
216,000 m/h.!

Mechanical draught
Forced
Induced

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Natural draught system
Density difference and height is great.
They are preferred for following
conditions:
in cool humid climates
For broad range and long approach
In heavy winter loads
Force to induced the flow(natural
convection) :

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Mechanical draught Cooling Towers

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Mechanical draught Cooling Towers
FD fan is mounted on lower side of the tower.
Since it operates on cooler air, it consumes less power.
Air distribution problems, leakage, recirculation of the hot and moist air back
to the tower
Most of the mechanical draught cooling towers for utility applications
are of induced type.
ID fan is located on top of cooling tower.
Air enters through large opening at the side of tower and passes through the
fill
ID fans are large, 0.6 to 10 m. Operates at low speeds through reduction
gearing
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Mechanical draught Cooling Towers
Blades are usually made of cast aluminum, stainless steel or fiber glass
Flow into the tower is horizontal.
In the fill, flow can be horizontal or vertical, cross flow or a counter
flow cooling tower

Advantages
Low capital and construction cost
Assured supply of the required quantity of air at all loads and climatic
conditions
Small physical structure

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Dry Cooling Towers
When cooling water is not available .
Hot water flow through finned
tubes, over which the cooling air is
passed.
Direct and indirect.
No need to have large supply of
cooling water.
Now power plant can be located
near the fuel source or grid.
They are not effective as evaporative
cooling.
Increase in turbine exhaust pressure
and decrease in overall plant
efficiency.
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Direct Dry Cooling Towers
High vacuum in the cooling coils
and the need for large steam
ducts. .
Limited to small-size power plants.
The largest direct installation in the
United States is the 330-MW
minemouth Wyodak powerplant
near Gillette, Wyoming, built by
Pacific Power and Light Co. and the
Black Hills Power and Light Co.
Turbine exhaust steam is admitted
to coils via two 13-ft diameter
ducts. 37
Direct Dry Cooling Towers
Warm water from the condenser flow
through finned tubes and is cooled by
atmospheric air blow over tubes.
Two heat exchangers in series
Between water and steam
Between water and atmospheric air
Direct contact spray
Turbine exhaust enters the open
condenser and cold circulating water is
sprayed into the steam for driectintimate
mixing
The condensate falls into a bottom recover
from which a part is fed to the plant as
feed water and reaming to cooling tower 38
Indirect Dry Cooling Towers
Shell and Tube type Condenser
Surface condenser having
ammonia as the coolant.
In the steam condenser ammonia
evaporates.
In the dry tower ammonia is
cooled and then saturated liquid
ammonia is pump back to
condenser.

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Indirect Dry Cooling - Example
Kendal Power Station (south Africa) has installed capacity of about
4116 MW utilizing indirect dry cooling with 6 units.

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Hybrid Cooling Towers
Both dry and wet cooling elements, which are used individually or
together to achieve the best features of each:
Wet cooling performance on the hottest/dry days of the year and the
water conservation capability of dry cooling during the remainder of
the year with cooled/humid enviroments.
Hybrid systems have the potential for more than 50% water savings
compared to wet cooling towers

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Hybrid Cooling Towers

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Drift Eliminators
Drif (or windage) water droplets in
the cooling tower during evaporative
cooling
Drif eliminators are used in order to
hold drif rates typically to 0.001
0.005% of the circulating flow rate.
Drift eliminators are designed to
capture large water droplets caught in
the cooling tower air stream.

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Example (PK NAG)

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Psychometry in Cooling Towers
Any temperature you measure with
thermometer is dry bulb
temperature.

The wet-bulb temperature is the


temperature a parcel of air would
have if it were cooled to saturation by
the evaporation of water into it, with
the latent heat being supplied by the
parcel. (refer to good
thermodynamics book for details)
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Dew Point Temperature
Dew on the grass in morning !!! Water vapors on your car windscreen!!!
Saturation temperature corresponding to vapour pressure is called
dew point temperature

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Specific and Relative Humidity Of Air
Specific or absolute humidity :

Saturated air!

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Specific and Relative Humidity Of Air
Relative Humidity

Saturated air, RH = 100%

Combining SH and RH, We have:

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Psychrometric chart
Representation of all the properties of atmospheric air in single chart
(usually at 1 atmospheric pressure).

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Psychrometric chart

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Performance of Cooling Towers
Approach
Difference between the exit temperature of cooling water and the wet bulb
temperature of ambient air
Range
Difference between the temperature of incoming warm water and the exiting
cooled water
Cooling efficiency
Ratio of actual cooling of water to the maximum cooling possible

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Working Equations for Cooling Towers

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