CFD Numerical Simulation of Drift Diffusion of the

NPPs Cooling Tower

GUO Dong-peng

1,2,3

YAO Ren-tai

1. College of environment science and engineering

Taiyuan University of Technology
Taiyuan, China
2. Nuclear Environmental Science Research Institute
China Institute for Radiation Protection
Taiyuan, China
3.Department of environment science and engineering
Taiyuan University of Science and Technology
Taiyuan, China
guodp@126.com
AbstractA CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics)
software (STAR-CD) was employed to simulate the
performance of the NNPs (nuclear power plants) cooling
tower with drift injection in neutral atmosphere condition.
With the N-S equations were closed with k- equations, a
mathematical mode could be established for simulating
the flow in cooling tower. After simulating drift diffusion
and rise in a normal size and simple condition, the
relation of drift diffusion and rise to air velocity was
analyzed. The result was analyzed and compared with
Gauss Plume model and Hanna model, which proved the
feasibility of this method. Also, some insufficiency about
the method and improving suggestions were given in this
paper.
Keywords-Numerical simulation; computa1ional fluid dynamics;
drift diffusion and rise; velocity field; concentration field

I.

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, a lot of work has been made about the

site selection of nuclear power plant in the interior in China.
Recycled cooling water systems are usually used in nuclear
power plants which is similar with cooling towers recycling
system as used in large thermal power plants. In normal
condition, the process may cause the cooling water is
discharged in the form of vapor. Hanna [1] pointed out that
energy of cooling tower emissions is two times as the
electricity power that can be generated in thermal power
plants, and more than half of the energy wasted was
discharged in the form of latent heat.
The impact of the drift from cooling tower for the
environmental in nuclear power plants was mainly in three
aspects: firstly, the vision become bad because of the large
amount of white opaque drift; secondly, the cooling tower in
nuclear power has the height above 200m, while the height of
building with containment is about 70m, the stack nozzle of
chimney is located on the surface of containment or above the

Nuclear Environmental Science Research Institute

China Institute for Radiation Protection
Taiyuan, China
YAOrentai001@vip.sina.com

QIAO Qing-dang
Nuclear Environmental Science Research Institute
China Institute for Radiation Protection
Taiyuan, China
Qiaoqingdang@163.com
containment shell 2-5m, so the drift discharged from the
cooling could condense into water droplets, which may have
some effects on the radioactive pollutants discharged from
chimney, moreover, wind direction under the cooling tower
could make the drift changed into the precipitation, also in
winter, ice can be formed on the ground,which lead to wet
deposition of radionuclides, then increased the risk because of
external exposure in the near field, so cooling tower has a
great effect on the short-term radioactive pollutants within the
distance of a few hundred meters from the nuclear power
plant; rise drift in the air can cause some changes of local
climate, also increase the formation of fog and change the
flow pattern in low wind speed. With the Earth's gravitation,
the droplets contained in drift of cooling tower may be distant
from the visible plume, the migration and diffusive law of
droplet mainly depends on the relationship between gravity
and buoyancy of droplet, which prove that Numerical
simulation or wind tunnel test could be used for physical
simulation and prediction of migration and diffusive law of
drift from [2].
Compared with the physical simulation and field test,
numerical simulation has several advantages: (1) low cost,
short cycle; (2) no interference from test equipment; (3)
complete data can be obtained; (4) the calculating results
can be reproduced on the computer screen.

In this paper, CFD technology was applied for

simulating the diffusion and rise of drift from cooling
tower in nuclear power plant. The numerical simulation of
the diffusion and rise of particles in the environment with
size less than 200m within drift from cooling tower is
mainly investigated, then further research about the law of
the diffusion, rise and deposition of drift, and the effect of
cooling tower for radioactive pollutants discharged from
nearby chimney.
II.

THE GEOMETRIC MODEL AND GRID GENERATION OF

NUMERICAL CALCULATION

A. The geometric model of numerical calculation

Financial support for this work: the 11th Five Year Development Foundation
of Nuclear Energy.

978-1-4244-5089-3/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

Numerical calculation was processed with the

original size of cooling tower and its nearby main
buildings in a nuclear power plant that will be
established. Having the cooling tower as the center,
extending 4000m,1000m,2500m,2500m and 3000m
downwards, upwards, toward the left, right and the sky,
respectively. The space size was 5000m 5000m
3000m (length width height).
The height of the cooling tower and the main buildings
nearby the cooling tower was 215m, 65m, 50m, 39m,
37m, 30m, respectively. The situation of those buildings
was showed in Figure 1.

temperature, the humidity is near saturation, the effect of

the changes between air and water, the phase
transformation and the radiation of the sun could be
ignored.
In real working conditions, the effect of atmospheric
conditions for the flow field was slow and continuous,
so the relationship between the parameters related to gas
flow and time and the effect of vibration of gas flow for
flow field both could be ignored; also as the small
amount of liquid within the airflow, the impact of
droplets for the airflow could be ignored. This particle
studies the mixed flow action between the heat, moisture
air carrying drift and the air, the space in the cooling
tower was taken as a mixed region which was opened to
atmosphere, relative to the atmosphere, the outlet of
cooling tower as a radial jet source. In this paper, with
standard k- turbulent model closed N-S equation was
used for calculating the fluid [3, 4].
1. Mass conservation equation
u v w
(1)
+ +
=0
x

2. Momentum conservation equation

Figure 1. The geometric model

The grid generation of numerical calculation

In order to suit the complex body of cooling tower,

a hexahedral grid with a good topology was applied
when a grid-part was made for the calculation region.
With the air flow and separation around the buildings
nearly along the surface of the buildings, and the
similarity between the used body-fitted grid and the
shape of buildings, which was consistent with the wind
direction of approaching flow, so the error caused by
numerical dissipation could be effectively reduced. A
grid-part with higher density was used for numerical
simulation, the total number of grid was about 320,000
for simulated region.
III. THE PHYSICAL MODEL AND BOUNDARY PHYSICAL
PARAMETERS OF NUMERICAL CALCULATION

Model equations

With the center of cooling tower in the ground as

center-point, wind direction as axis, the diffusive region
of drift was a symmetrical plane. In the real process, the
flow in the region was a three-dimensional, steady and
incompressible, as how viscous fluid flowed. The
calculation model used in this paper contains the entire
3D space, which reflects the speed characteristics of the
atmosphere. Moreover, during the simulating process,
the model was simplified appropriately according to the
real situation within the accepted error: according to the
Bousinesq assumptions, the meteorological conditions
could be taken as neutral in summer with high

du u
u
u
u
p
=
+u
+ v + w = fx
dt t
x
y
z
x
p
dv v
v
v
v
=
+ u + v + w = fy
dt t
x
y
z
y

(2)

dw w
w
w
w
p
=
+u
+v
+w
= fa
dt
t
x
y
z
z
3. The standard k- flow equation
(k ) (kui ) ui k
+
= u + + Gk + Gb YM
t
xi
x j k x j
ui

( ) ( ui )
+
=
u +

t
xi
x j

+ C1 (Gk + C3 Gb ) C2
x
k
k

(3)

Here, Gk-is the turbulent kinetic energy caused by the

gradient of layer flow velocity; Gb-is the turbulent kinetic
energy caused by the effect of buoyancy; YM- is the
fluctuations generated by excessive proliferation in
compressible turbulence; C1, C2, C3-are model
constants; k, -are turbulent Prandtl numbers of k
equation and equation; C1, C2, C3, k, -are
constants for the turbulent model. According to the
research of Launder et al. [5,6] and the standard value
STAR-CD recommended, values used for calculating
were showed in Table 1.
TABLE I.

C1
1.44

C2
1.92

TURBULENCE MODEL CONSTANTS

C3
0.09

k
1.0

1.3

B Boundary conditions

Wind inlet: Inlet in STAR-CD is set by wind profile of real

atmospheric boundary layer.

Cooling tower outlet: cooling tower drift emission rate in

STAR-CD is set by prototype cooling towers flow rate.
H2O + air (H2O mass percentage concentration of 2.2%)
(4)
Cooling tower wall u + v + w = 0
x y z
Ground

T
C
= 0,
=0
xi
xi

velocity field

(5)

The remaining exports face - x = 0

i

(6)

IV. THE RULES OF DIFFUSION

Diffusion of drift is affected by many factors, Hanna[7],

Yao Zengquan[8] et al. reported that the droplet with
diameter less than 200m was strongly affected by the
atmospheric turbulence, its motion could be simulated by
Gauss Plume dispersion model. According to tracer test in
Chalk Point power plant of Maryland in U.S., the percent of
particles with diameter less than 200m is 85.5%.
Generally, the concentration of a point under wind
direction is related to w0 -the emission rate of drift, u-wind
speed of environment, H-the height of cooling tower and
T-the temperature of drift.
Calculation of this paper was processed according the
working condition data obtained in a 2220 MW nuclear
power plant, parameters related to calculating the structure
of cooling tower and the variable parameters and operating
parameters were set as shown in Table 2.
With constant drift outlet temperature, drift emission
rate, and environment temperature, only changed wind
speed, using CFD, the concentration fields of drift
diffusion under cooling tower in varying wind was
obtained. speed cooling tower drift diffusion of
concentration. The parameter setting of different working
conditions were shown in Table 3.
TABLE II.

THE PARAMETERS OF STRUCTURE AND VARIABLES

Name
Heat load
Cooling tower height
The water entry of cooling tower
Emission rate
Emission intensity
Zero-meter diameter
Exit diameter

data
2220 MW
215 m
65000 kg/s
4.5 m/s
1.09 kg/m3
172.7 m
100 m

TABLE III. THE PARAMETERS OF WORKING CONDITIONS

Case 1
Case 2
Case 3

u (m/s)
1.65
5.4
8.0

w0 (m/s)
4.5
4.5
4.5

T fume(K)

303
303
303

T air(K)

293
293
293

Note: u is wing speed in environment with H = 100m.

Figure 2. The changes of the speed and turbulent intensity with height at
different distances under case 2.

Figure 2 is a profile of wind at different distance under a

representative annual average wind speed (case 2). As
shown in Figure 2, there is a accelerated airflow up the top
of cooling tower; within wind layer near the top of the
tower, the velocity profile become more uniform, with little
vertical wind shear. The wake region (including the
circumfluence), the wind speed significantly reduced,
while the turbulent intensity increased significantly, the
speed loss reached the maximum at downwind 1.0H, its
speed was only 20% to 30% corresponding to the
approaching flow, also the turbulent kinetic energy reached
maximum with turbulent intensity increased to about 0.8.
Then with the increase of downwind distance, the mix of
vapor flow became uniform and the turbulent intensity
reduced gradually. The velocity profile and the vertical
distribution of turbulent intensity were tend to consistent
with the approaching flow. Regions with stronger turbulent
intensity were happened mainly in the circumfluence. The
predicted results had a good agreement with the
Meroneys[2] research who used CFD model and dye
tracer test for the validation of cooling tower in Chalk
Point power plant. Also, drift emission rate of cooling
tower greatly affected the wind speed. When the wind
speed at the outlet of cooling tower was strong (case 2 and
3), the attack of drift emissions for the velocity field of
atmosphere carrying originally was suppressed, field
disturbance mainly occurred in the region near ground, but
the field gradient significantly increased. The local
atmosphere circumfluence and low-pressure area were
happened near the cooling tower wall along downwind,
with the increase of the wind speed, the region was
suppressed and gradually shrinked, while its strength
reduced gradually. The impact of the drift discharged from
cooling tower on the local air was reflected in the whole
calculating region of downwind. The smaller the wind
speed, the more obvious the impact and disturbance, the
greater the expansion of the region; in the region above the
exports in the cooling tower, as existent horizontal wind,
the gas mixture was very intense, and the greater the wind
speed, the faster mixing the air, the faster loss the

dissipation of momentum and heat, which also directly

affected the rise of gas.
B The concentration field
The concentration distribution at different wind speed
1m axis above the ground was shown in Figure 3, to
facilitate comparison the normalized concentration K = c * u
Q

was used for calculating the concentration on the ground,

where C * was volume concentration at different distances
of downwind, u - wind speed, Q - source strength (volume
emission rate of drift).
From Figure 3, we can conclude that CFD can well
simulate the diffusion and rise of drift from cooling tower.
The numerical simulation of drift diffusion agreed with the
normal distribution law. Under different speeds, the
maximum concentration on the ground was occurred
within the range of 0.5km-1.0km downwind cooling tower,
with the increasing of wind speed, the evaporation rate of
drift increased, the downwind concentration on the ground
decreased gradually, and the maximum occurred some
distance away. Therefore, the stronger the wind speed, the
more beneficial the drift diffusion.

the rise height of the drift, according to Hannas[7]

hypothesis in 1982, environment variables of cooling tower
didnt change with its varying height, then a formula about
H used for calculating for rise height of visible drift
from cooling tower could be given.
In a wind environment:
1

2
H = 3.6r0 w0 2 q0 1

u qs q a

(8)

In a environment without wind:

1
2

H = 9r0 q0 1
q s q a

(10)

In the equation, w0- drift vertical velocity in outlet of

cooling tower, m/s; r0- the radius of outlet of cooling tower,
m; u-environmental average wind speed in outlet of
cooling tower, m/s; q0-drift humidity ratio outlet of cooling
tower, g/g; qs-environmental saturation specific humidity,
g/g; qa-environmental specific humidity, g/g.
2) Rational Analysis of the concentration field:In this
paper, Gauss model was applied to verifying the calculation
results about the CFD maximum concentration on the
ground in three working conditions.The largest ground
concentration of CFD calculation results under three type of
condition are presented, results were shown in Figure 4.

Figure 3. The curve of concentration change at downwind 1 m axis above

the ground.

C The analysis of rationality

1) Theory [9]: The Gauss basic diffusion equation derived
from the assumption of normal distribution:
y2 (z H)2
(z + H)2
q
C(x, y, z, H) =
+ exp
exp 2 exp

(7)
2
2
2u yz 2 y 2z
2z

In the equation, H(the effective height of objective),

which was equal to the sum of HS(the actual height of
chimney) and H (the rose height of drift), i.e.
H = Hs+H
Remaining the actual height of chimney consistent, H
only related to H.
There is still no regular formula used for calculating

Figure 4. The maximum concentration on the ground, under different wind

speed. From left to right, which represented case 1, 2 and 3, respectively.

As shown in Figure 4, with different wind speed, all

the results of maximum concentration on the ground
obtained from Gauss model were higher than those from
CFD, moreover, the distance of the results from Gauss
model were further, compared with the Gauss model, the
results from CFD were more conservative.

3) Rational analysis of the rise height:Hanna formula was

used in order to verify the effectiveness of the calculating drift
rise height from cooling tower calculated with CFD, the
results
were
shown
in
Figure
5.

Figure 5. The relationship between the environmental wind speed and drift
rise height

As shown in Figure 5, with the increasing of wind speed,

the drift rise height reduced, also the predicted results were
agreement with that obtained using Hanna model,conclusion
was agreement well with Meroneys[2] results, which used the
CFD model and Hanna formula for verifying the drift rise
height of cooling tower in Chalk Point power plant, moreover,
CFD model can be used for calculating speed and turbulent
intensity profiles with a good result.
V.

CONCLUSIONS

Under neutral atmospheric conditions, CFD model

performs well not only in the simulation of drift rise and
dispersion from cooling tower, but the velocity field of visible
drift and around air of cooling tower as well.
Results from STAR-CD is agreement well with Hannas
model in predicting the law of diffusion and rise of particles
with size less than 200m, however, STAR-CD gives a more
effective and easy way to do this, and with the help of
computer clusters, a powerful graphical function can be
achieved.
Because of the complexity of drift diffusion, in real cases,
its diffusion can be affected by terrain, atmospheric
temperature, environment temperature vertical variation, and
also the evaporation and deposition of drift. Therefore, this
model can be improved in these areas in future studies.
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