Investigating Parameters Affecting the Performance of Hybrid Cooling Tower in Steam Power Plant

One of the biggest consumers of water is fossil energy plants, and most of this water consumption is in cooling systems. The considered power plant (reference power plant) in this research has a 100 MW unit in full load mode. Cooling towers have a high cooling capacity, but their high-water consumption due to the use of evaporative cooling causes steam to escape from the opening of the tower and be expelled it into the atmosphere. Wet towers provide lower temperatures than dry towers and as a result higher efficiency, but they have high water consumption. In this research, the environmental parameters affecting the compensatory water consumption required by the hybrid cooling towers (wet-dry) are investigated. Using cycle tempo software, simulation has been done to evaluate the performance of hybrid cooling towers in environmental conditions. The comparison of the volume of compensating water in the same cooling cycle, where only the hybrid cooling tower was replaced by the cooling tower, showed that it is possible to reduce the water consumption in the cooling process by 20% by using the hybrid cooling tower. Also, the use of hybrid tower cooling means that the increase in ambient temperature up to 30 degrees does not affect the amount of electricity produced by the power plant, and the amount of electricity produced in the power plant does not change with the increase in air humidity.