Influence of non-uniform layout fillings on thermal performance for wet cooling tower

Based on the similarity theory, thermal-state model experiment in lab is performed to investigate the thermal performance of wet cooling towers under different layout patterns of fillings, and five kinds of layout patterns, including uniform layout and four kinds of non-uniform layout patterns, are studied in this paper. Experimental results manifest that the thermal performance of wet cooling towers under nonuniform layout patterns is outstanding by calculating and analyzing five performance parameters, which are ooling termperature difference, cooling efficiency, Merkel number, Lewis number and the ratio of evaporative heat rejection. Additionally, research also obtained the optimal three-block layout pattern of fillings in which the radius ratio of r(a)/r(c) is approximately 0.44 and r(b)/r(c) is around 0.71; here r(a), r(b) and r(c) are the radius of three blocks, respectively. What's more, compared with the uniform layout pattern of fillings, the thermal performance of the optimal layout pattern can enhance by 30% at maximum within the scope of this test. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.