Abstract:

 Packing is the most important part of the heat exchanger in natural draft wet cooling tower, which accounts for 60%-70% of the total heat transfer, so it has a great potential in energy saving. According to the arrangement of packing layer, this paper put forward the idea that used arc-shaped packing layer instead of traditional horizontal packing layer； established a heat and mass transfer model for the arc-shaped packing layer in wet cooling tower with using simulation software Fluent. Then, the impact of packing layer arrangement with different radians on the thermal performance of cooling tower was studied and compared； the relevant parameters’ changes of arc-shaped packing layer in wet cooling tower, such as air flow field and outlet water temperature, were calculated and analyzed under different natural crosswind conditions. The research results show that： the arc-shaped packing layer can increase the heat exchange area, improve the air flow field in rain zone, thus increase the heat exchange quantity and pumping power of cooling tower, and reduce the outlet water temperature； this improvement is more significant under natural crosswind conditions. In the case of 0.12 rad packing layer, when the natural wind speed is 6 m/s, the outlet water temperature can be reduced up to 0.36 ℃.

Key words: cooling tower, arc-shaped packing layer, radian, crosswind, numerical simulation