Two-phase Euler-Lagrange CFD simulation of evaporative cooling in a Wind Tower

A new design of Wind Tower is investigated numerically under different structural parameters and environmental conditions. The new design is some wetted columns, consisting of wetted curtains hung in the tower column, which are modeled as surfaces that inject droplets of water with very low speed. The CFD open source package - Open FOAM - is used. The current three-dimensional CFD simulation has adopted both the Eulerian approach for the air phase and the Lagrangian approach for the water phase. The effects of water droplet diameter and water droplet temperature on the thermal performance of the Wind Tower are investigated at specific inlet air velocity and relative humidity and height of wetted columns. Also, the effects of wind velocity, temperature, and relative humidity inlet to Wind Tower are studied. Changing the height of the wetted columns and its effect on the evaporative cooling in other specific parameters is studied. The results obtained from the present CFD study are compared with the analytical data taken from the literature and a good agreement is observed. As a result, the height of 10 m of wetted columns decreases 12 K of the ambient air temperature and increases 22% of its relative humidity. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.