PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF NATURAL DRAFT WET COOLING TOWER AT OPTIMIZED INJECTION HEIGHT

Cooling tower is an integral part of thermal power generation plant. Basically cooling tower are heat rejection devices used to transfer waste heat to the atmosphere. Investigation involves the two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model based on actual reference conditions. Temperature and humidity inside the tower are having main influence on the performance of natural draft cooling tower. At optimum injection height tower cooling range (difference of temperature between hot water inlet and cold water outlet) is about 1.1k, which sufficiently capable of increasing the effectiveness of cooling tower. This leads to increase of effectiveness by 12.15%, which results in improved efficiency of power plants. The resulting optimal injection height reduces the relative humidity by 8.5% at the outer radius of tower.