Energy and Second Law of Thermodynamics Analysis of Shower Cooling Tower with Variation in Inlet Air Temperature

Abstract

A shower cooling tower (SCT) operates without fill because of salt decomposition on the fill that leads to deterioration of conventional cooling tower performance. This study presents a two-dimensional mathematical model for energy and exergy analysis of multi-diameter droplets and air interaction along with the height of the forced draft SCT, to predict the exit condition of water droplet for industrial application. Different inlet air dry bulb temperatures (DBT) were used for the study and the model was validated with experimental results. At the inlet of the tower, ten different diameters of water droplets simultaneously were used at a given time for analysis and the droplet diameter model based on Rosin Rammler distribution. The result showed that thermal efficiency and second law efficiency relatively increased along the height of SCT with increase of the inlet air temperature. It was confirmed that maximum reduction in water droplet temperature along the height of SCT was achieved by minimum inlet air DBT. It was also noticed that exergy supplied by water was more than exergy absorbed by air and maximum destruction of total exergy took place at the beginning of air-water interaction.