Thermal-Exergetic Analysis for Evaluation and Optimization of Performance of Cooling Towers for Fresh Water and Seawater

In this study, thermal, exergetic analysis and performance evaluation of seawater and fresh wet cooling tower and the effect of parameters on its performance is investigated. Base on the definition of an economic model for capital and variable costs, an optimized efficiency of a cooling tower has been evaluated. With modeling of a cooling tower and using of experimental results and a developed code in EES, this study has been performed. Due to lack of fresh water, seawater cooling is an interesting choice for future of cooling, so the effect of seawater in the range of 1 g/kg to 60 g/kg for salinity on the performance has been studied. Effect of changing the salinity of the water on performance and parameters which are related to exergy has been compared with a cooling tower which used fresh water. Results showed that decreasing of air efficiency about 3%, increasing water efficiency about 1.5% are some of these effects. Moreover with the formation of fouling the performance of cooling tower decreased about 15% which this phenomenon and its effects like increase in output water temperature and tower excess volume have been shown.