A Study of Heller cooling towers and increasing their efficiency

Heller cooling towers have a wide range of applications, particularly in the regions with water shortage. A possible method to improve the efficiency of these towers, at high ambient temperatures, can be using a fan in the tower to increase heat transfer rate. As a case study, the operational data for Shahid Montazeri Power Plant (Isfahan, Iran) are used. Tower simulations with and without suction fan are developed using CFD commercial code, Fluent. Cooling tower is simulated at different ambient temperatures and effects of fan power were studied numerically. A gPROMS code is developed, as well, to find out the effects of installing the fan on the performance and parameters of the power plant. The results indicate that, at ambient temperature of 315 K, there is an increase of 7 MW per turbine or a total power increase of 56 MW in the power production. An economic analysis of the plant, based on simple payback time method, predicts a total investment of 660,000 MRls and a payback time of 1.6 year to 13.5 years, depending on the