Numerical Study on Thermal Performance of a Wet Cooling Tower with Windshield Board

To solve the icing problems in wet cooling towers at areas such as the bottom surface of filler,air inlet and base torus in winter in north China,windshield boards are generally installed at the air inlet.Based on a newly-built heat and mass transfer model,CFD simulation and analysis have been performed to study the thermal performance of a wet cooling tower installed with different layers of windshield board at different horizontal wind speeds and environmental temperatures.Results show that when the wind speed is lower than 4m/s,the temperature will be relatively low at areas facing the wind in the tower,where icing troubles easily occur;with the rise of wind speed,the low-temperature zone generally moves to the leeward side;at a wind speed of 8 m/s,as environmental temperatures at-10 ℃,-17 ℃,-23 ℃,the optimal layers of windshield to be installed in the tower are believed to be 1,3 and 5 respectively,which effectively help to improve the temperature field in the tower and prevent the tower from being frozen.