Arch Comput Methods Eng (2013) 20:61–109
DOI 10.1007/s11831-013-9081-9
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Adam Klimanek
Received: 1 October 2012 / Accepted: 20 January 2013 / Published online: 29 January 2013
© CIMNE, Barcelona, Spain 2013
Abstract Numerical modelling of natural draft wet-cooling
towers is considered in this paper. Development of a com-
plete CFD model capable of predicting cooling tower per-
formance under various operating conditions is presented.
A step-by-step approach is employed, thus one-dimensional
numerical modelling of counterflow heat and mass exchang-
ers is extensively presented first. This is followed by reduced
order modelling of heat and mass transfer in cooling tower
fills by means of proper orthogonal decomposition radial ba-
sis function networks. Then the approaches in modelling of
droplet zones (rain and spray zones) are discussed. Finally
the two and three-dimensional CFD models are discussed.
Keywords Cooling towers · Numerical modelling · Heat
and mass transfer · CFD · Reduced order modelling
1 Introduction
Numerical modelling has been established in recent years as
a powerful tool for the solution of complex physical phe-
nomena. Computational models have found broad applica-
tion areas in all branches of science and technology. Detailed
solutions of many physical problems obtained by computa-
tional techniques have been successfully verified and vali-
dated against experimental data, proving robustness of these
approaches. This has accelerated prototyping and design, af-
fected process control, optimization and manufacturing of
many products and allowed it to be based purely on numeri-
cal simulations. It should be stressed, however, that the ver-
ification of the models and their validation against experi-
mental data is crucial.
A. Klimanek ()
ul. Konarskiego 22, 44-100 Gliwice, Poland
e-mail: adam.klimanek@polsl.pl
A special position in the numerical modelling has the
Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which due to solv-
ing the general transport equations and many sub-models,
can deal with coupled multiphysics problems. The trans-
port and sub-model equations in the CFD codes are solved
on a discretized computational domain, called the compu-
tational mesh or grid. Depending on the process and mod-
elling assumptions at hand, the required sizes of the mesh
can vary greatly. The mesh size, together with the numeri-
cal precision and the number of equations to be solved, are
the indicators of the computer memory and processor speed
requirement. The computational resources are therefore the
delimiter of the processes that can be simulated, or can dic-
tate the scales to which the details of the flow are resolved.
In the latter case, sub-models are used to simulate the be-
havior of the modelled process, not resolving the details in
smaller scales. An example of such a sub-model can be a
turbulence model solved on a large mesh and in steady state,
instead of resolving the inherently unsteady turbulent flow
down to Kolmogorov scales. The sub-models produce ef-
fective quantities representing the net effects of the process.
They are usually semi-empirical, thus they require experi-
mental data. Application of sub-models allows simulation of
computationally demanding processes within realistic times.
Many industrial processes require heat to be discharged
to the environment. This is true for refrigeration, power gen-
eration, chemical, metallurgical and process plant cycles.
The cooling process is usually utilized by directing the heat
to the surroundings in a stream of water, air or a combination
of the two.
Sources of water, such as rivers, lakes and oceans, are
the cheapest heat sinks used in industrial cooling. The cool-
ing water is directed to a plant and returned heated to the
source, thus, these types of cooling are often termed once-
through systems [62]. The natural water reservoirs guarantee
62
low cooling water temperature with little dependence on the
ambient air conditions. In many countries, however, the al-
lowed rise of water temperature of these sources is limited
and this is what restricts the use of these types of cooling,
according to Kröger [51].
Such large sources of water are not always available in
the vicinity of planned location of the plant site. In this situa-
tion, cooling towers with circulating cooling water are built.
The most frequently encountered cooling towers are large
chimneys, whose purpose is rejection of the waste heat to
the surrounding air. If the flowing air is in direct contact with
water, such towers are called wet-cooling towers, otherwise
we talk about dry-cooling towers. Due to partial evapora-
tion of water and drift, some of the cooling water in wet
systems is lost to the environment. This water has to be sup-
plemented, which usually comprises 1–4 % of the inlet wa-
ter mass flow rate, according to Kozioł and Stechman [50].
In dry-cooling towers the air flowing through the tower is
warmed up in a heat exchanger. In wet-cooling towers, the
air is warmed up and moisturized by direct contact with the
cooling water. Both, the temperature increase and moistur-
izing the air reduce its density and induces the natural draft.
This effect is used in natural draft cooling towers, where the
large structures allow induction of flow through the towers.
For small towers the draft is too small to induce the flow of
air, and it is induced mechanically by fans. Towers of this
type are known as mechanical draft towers and usually are
small structures whose sizes are constrained by the diameter
of the fan (usually less than 10 m). Then for large cooling
systems many of mechanical draft towers are used. They are
arranged in-line to form rectangular banks of individual cells
or are circularly shaped with a few fans in the center. Also
hybrid cooling towers exist, where both, the dry and wet-
cooling mechanisms are incorporated. See [35, 51] for more
detailed description of these systems.
The concrete hyperboloid natural draft wet-cooling tow-
ers have been frequently built in last few decades. Most
of these structures are used in power generating, chemical
and metallurgical industry. Construction of the large cool-
ing tower shells is expensive, however once built, they can
be used for many years. Modernization of internal equip-
ment of existing towers requires lower financial outlays than
building new towers. As the demand for electric power con-
tinues to increase, new towers will be built in the near future.
Both, the modernized and newly built towers, should meet
the modern standards.
Thermal efficiency of conventional power plants is low
mostly due to the fact that considerable fraction of the fuel
energy needs to be discharged to the environment as the
waste heat. The increase of efficiency can be obtained by
reduction of steam pressure in the condenser. As the pres-
sure is affected by the cooling water temperature, the cool-
ing system performance has influence on the thermal effi-
A. Klimanek
ciency, fuel consumption and flue gas emissions of power
plants.
Operation of cooling towers is dependent on the weather
conditions such as ambient air temperature, humidity, tem-
perature inversions, wind and rain. Other quantities of im-
portance are: the cooling water parameters, geometry of the
tower and properties of its internal equipment. Prediction of
influence of these parameters on cooling tower performance
have been investigated for decades. Most of the developed
methods are zero or one-dimensional semi-empirical tech-
niques. Severe simplifications of these group of methods in-
fluence their accuracy. Nonetheless, the simplicity of these
techniques made them popular among the engineers. The
methods have been successfully applied in rating and sizing
computations, as well as tower performance tests. With the
advent of CFD techniques a development of more advanced
models of cooling towers became possible.
Selection of the design and operational parameters of
cooling towers affects the overall efficiency of the system.
This selection is based on simulations of the cooling pro-
cess and thus depends on the accuracy of the applied com-
putational techniques. Moreover, the cooling towers should
undergo mandatory performance tests. To pass these test,
the simulation technique underlying the design of the tower,
should produce reliable results. The most frequently applied
technique is the Merkel method [59] and its modifications,
the e-NTU [30] and Poppe [70] approaches. These are zero
or one-dimensional models of heat and mass transfer that
are solved simultaneously with the draft equation. As these
models lack generality, they are not able to take into account
more complex phenomena occurring in the tower like radial
flow nonuniformities, shape of the tower fill and the effect
of cross-wind. The winter operation of cooling tower, where
the tower fill is not fully loaded to keep the water temper-
ature above freezing point, cannot be tackled too. Applica-
tion of these methods for optimization of tower shape and its
equipment was limited to a few simple cases. In recent years
cooling towers are used to discharge also the flue gases from
desulphurization units. The combined plumes enhance dis-
persion of the exhaust. This affects the cooling tower perfor-
mance and needs special treatment in modelling.
It should be however stressed that the above mentioned,
low-dimensional models have been for many years success-
fully applied in sizing and rating calculations of cooling
towers. Maturity of the methods allows experienced design-
ers and researchers reliably apply these tools.
The above mentioned aspects show however the need for
creating a more general and robust approach to the simu-
lation of the cooling process. CFD models are natural can-
didates to construct such simulation models. Some of the
phenomena can be treated with simplified two-dimensional
axisymmetric models but other, like the influence of cross-
wind, require a three-dimensional approach. The proposed
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Fig. 1 The counterflow natural
draft wet-cooling tower and its
internal equipment
model should give an insight into the phenomena occurring
in the tower and accurately predict, within a realistic time,
the tower performance under various conditions. The model
should be applicable to both sizing and rating calculations.
CFD models of diverse complexity and dimensionality have
already been developed by various authors [2, 22, 56, 57, 72,
75, 90, 91].
This paper deals with numerical modelling of natural
draft wet-cooling towers. Development of a complete CFD
model capable of predicting cooling tower performance un-
der various operating conditions is presented. A step-by-
step approach is employed, thus one-dimensional numeri-
cal modelling of counterflow heat and mass exchangers is
presented first. This is followed by the reduced order mod-
elling of heat and mass transfer. Then the two and three-
dimensional CFD models are presented. The above men-
tioned sub-model approach is used extensively in modelling
of mass, heat and momentum transfer in the tower.
2 Heat and Mass Transfer in Counterflow Fills
In natural draft, evaporative cooling towers the water to be
cooled is sprinkled by a spray nozzle system on the top of
a heat and mass exchanger, called the fill. The water flows
downwards and forms a film on the internal surface of the
fill. A diagram of the natural draft wet-cooling tower and its
internal equipment is shown in Fig. 1.
The dominant mass and heat transfer in the tower occur
in three main regions, namely the spray, the fill and the rain
zones, with the most significant transfer region being the fill
zone, where 80–90 % of the total heat transfer is rejected. As
stated by Kröger [51], the heat transferred in the rain zone
comprises 10–20 % of the total heat transfer. The least sig-
nificant is the spray zone with importance of a few percent.
63
The cooling tower film fill (pack) is a direct contact heat
and mass exchanger, where the water is cooled by the up-
ward flowing air. The important property of a film fill is the
large specific exchange area af , m2 /m3 , which allows the
heat and mass transfer rates to be intensified.
The circulating water is cooled due to water evapora-
tion and convective heat transfer. The total heat transferred
through the water-air interface comprises two components—
the heat associated with evaporation of water and the con-
vective heat flux. The dominant component of the total heat
flux is the former. It was shown by Hawlader and Liu [22]
that the heat associated with the evaporation comprises
about 80 % of the total heat flux rejected in the fill zone.
For specified water load and temperature, the fraction of the
evaporation heat transfer rate depends on the current air con-
ditions (temperature, humidity), air mass flow rate and type
of the pack.
The basis for calculation of evaporative cooling have
been first introduced by Merkel [59] in 1925. Various de-
velopments and improvements, since its first appearance,
have been reported in the literature, for example the works
by Baker and Shryock [6], Bošnjaković [11], Kloppers and
Kröger [44, 47, 48], Osterle [63], Poppe [70], Sadasivam
and Balakrishnan [78], just to mention the few. As already
mentioned, Merkel type methods have been successfully ap-
plied in design and test computations of cooling towers.
These type of methods became also the basis for wet-cooling
tower computations recommended by standards such as
British Standards [81] and Cooling Tower Institute [29]. The
main advantage of the Merkel method is its simplicity that
allows the evaporative cooling process to be calculated by
hand. This is due to the fact that Merkel assumed the coun-
terflow evaporative cooling to be driven only by the differ-
ence between the enthalpy of the saturated air evaluated at
water temperature and the enthalpy of the air at the same
64 A. Klimanek

point in the tower. The improvements of the method were film and air is assumed. The interface water temperature is
usually related to the accuracy of the applied solution meth- the same as the bulk water temperature Tw in the control
ods as well as circumventing the inherent simplifications of volume and the bulk temperature of the air is Ta . The air and
Merkel’s approach. water conditions at any horizontal cross-section are constant
The heat and mass transfer in the tower is coupled with and the area dA is the same for the mass and heat transfer.
the flow of air through the tower. The airflow is determined The mass balance for the control volume reads
by solving the draft equation. The coupled equations are  
dmw
solved iteratively until the flow corresponds to the draft mw + dz + ma (1 + X)
force that induces it. dz
  
dX
= mw + ma 1 + X + dz (2)
2.1 Mass and Energy Balances in the Counterflow Film Fill dz

Simulation of the mass and heat transfer problem in a fill which can be reduced to
of the cooling tower requires a solution of the coupled mass dmw dX
and energy transfer equations in the air and water. Equations = ma (3)
dz dz
governing the process link four dependent variables:
where ma is the mass flow rate of dry air.
– temperature of the water Tw , The energy balance for the control volume takes the form
– temperature of the air Ta ,    
– humidity ratio of the air X, dmw dTw
mw + dz cw Tw +
w
dz + ma ha
– mass flow rate of the water mw . dz dz
 
The independent variable is the vertical position in the fill z. dha
= mw cw
w
Tw + ma ha + dz (4)
The formulation of the governing equations depends on sat- dz
uration level reached by the air. The air entering the fill
which simplifies to
is usually unsaturated but can become saturated and su-
persaturated. The unsaturated case is considered first. The dmw w dTw dha
governing equations for supersaturated air are presented in
w
cw Tw + mw cw = ma (5)
dz dz dz
Sect. 2.3.3.
Consider an infinitesimal control volume of a counter- where ha represents the enthalpy of the humid air per unit
flow fill. The elementary height of the volume is dz and its mass of dry air, which for unsaturated air takes the form
horizontal cross-section is Az so that the control volume is  
ha = cpa
a
Ta + X r0 + cpva
Ta (6)
dV = Az dz (1)
with r0 standing for the latent heat of evaporation evaluated
As shown in Fig. 2 the water flows downwards whilst the air at Tw = 0 °C. The quantities cw , cpa and cpv are the aver-
flows upwards. The air at the water-air interface is saturated age specific heats at constant pressure of water, dry air and
with water vapor. Vertical countercurrent plug flow of water water vapor, respectively. The calorific quantities arising in
the equations, i.e. cw , cpv , cpa and r0 are well known tem-
perature dependent quantities. The average specific heat at
constant pressure is evaluated using
 T
1
cp,av = cp (T )dT (7)
T 0

The superscripts attached to the specific heats indicate

whether the quantity is evaluated at water w or bulk air a
temperature. Analogous notation is used to distinguish the
saturation humidity ratios determined at water and bulk air
temperature.

2.2 Kinetics of Evaporation

The conservation equations (3) and (5) are accompanied

Fig. 2 Control volume of countercurrent flow fill by two relationships describing the kinetics of evaporation
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Fig. 3 Transport of heat and mass in a countercurrent flow fill
through the air-water interface area dA. The mass is trans-
ported by mass convection, whereas the heat by convection,
evaporation and radiation. In this work, both heat transfer
modes are modelled jointly, so that their separate influence
on the results are not distinguished. The heat and mass trans-
ferred through the air-water interface dA is shown in Fig. 3.
The kinetics is assumed to be driven by the difference in
concentrations for mass, and temperatures for heat, with ef-
fective mass β and heat α transfer rate coefficients. The con-
centrations of mass are represented by the humidity ratios.
The rate of mass transferred from the water interface to the
air is proportional to the mass concentration difference at the
air-water interface and in the bulk air. It can be expressed as
 
dmw = β Xsw − X dA
where β is the average mass transfer coefficient, Xsw is the
humidity ratio of air saturated with water vapor at the air-
water interface evaluated at local water temperature Tw and
X is the humidity ratio of the bulk air. The difference in
humidity ratios at the interface and in the bulk air (Xsw − X)
is the driving potential of the mass convection process. It is
assumed that the absolute pressure p in the fill is constant
(pressure drop is negligible), therefore for a given pressure
the saturation humidity Xsa depends on air temperature only
ps (Ta )
Xsa = 0.622
p − ps (Ta )
where ps is the saturation pressure of steam, while p stands
for the total pressure. Assuming moreover, that there is no
influence of heat transfer associated with evaporation on the
convection heat transfer and vice versa, the total heat re-
jected from the water into the air can be expressed as a su-
perposition of the two components as
dQ = dQe + dQc
65
where the subscripts e and c refer to the heat associated with
evaporation of mass and convection heat transfer, respec-
tively. The heat transferred from the water to the air asso-
ciated with mass convection is given by
 
dQe = he dmw = he β Xsw − X dA (11)
where he is the enthalpy of the evaporating water evaluated
at the bulk water temperature Tw . It can be expressed as
he = r0 + cpv
w
Tw (12)
w is evalu-
where the average specific heat of water vapor cpv
ated at Tw .
The convection heat transfer is expressed according to
Newton’s law of cooling as
dQc = α(Tw − Ta )dA (13)
where α is the average heat transfer coefficient.
As stated earlier the radiative heat transfer will be incor-
porated into convection heat transfer. Therefore α accounts
for both convection and radiation and can be expressed as
α = αconv + αrad (14)
Finally, the total heat transfer rate can be written as
 
dQ = dQe + dQc = he β Xsw − X + α(Tw − Ta ) dA (15)
Obtaining the mass β and heat transfer α coefficients is
cumbersome as it requires time consuming, inaccurate and
expensive experiments. The dimensionless measure of the
(8) relative rates of heat and mass transfer in an evaporative pro-
cess is the Lewis factor Lef (not to be confused with the
Lewis number Le = Sc/Pr). The Lewis factor is defined as
the ratio of the heat transfer Stanton number St to the mass
transfer Stanton number Stm . For air-water vapor system it
takes the form
St α
Lef = = (16)
Stm βcph
The specific heat in the denominator is the specific heat of
humid air
 a 
cph = cpa + Xcpva
(17)
(9)
If the value of the Lewis factor is known, only one of the pair
of coefficients: the mass or the heat transfer coefficient needs
to be found experimentally. In practice the Lewis factor is
determined from relationships resulting from assumption of
analogy between heat and mass transfer. For air-water vapor
systems the most frequently used relationships is by Bošn-
jaković [11], which will be introduced later.
Introducing the specific interface area af (also called
(10) area density) being the ratio of the air-water interface area
66
and the volume of the fill, the elementary exchange surface
can be expressed as
dA = af Az dz (18)
Using Eqs. (18) and (8), the mass of the water vapor trans-
ferred to the air can be written as
dmw  
= β Xsw − X af Az (19)
dz
The heat released at the air-water interface must be equal to
the enthalpy change of both, the water and the air given in
Eq. (5). Taking the change in air enthalpy only and equating
with the total heat transfer rate from Eq. (15) yields
dha  
transfer problems in wet-cooling tower fills. In contrast to
ma = he β Xsw − X + α(Tw − Ta ) af Az (20)
dz
Supersaturated Air The water content in the air gradually
increases as the air travels through the fill, so that finally
supersaturated air containing droplets of mist may be pro-
duced. In Fig. 4 such a situation is schematically drawn. The
water in contact with the supersaturated air is further evapo-
rated and cooled. The reason for this is that the evaporation
process is driven by the difference in the concentration of
the water vapor on the air-water interface and in the bulk
air. When the air is supersaturated the bulk air humidity ra-
tio is the humidity of the saturated air evaluated at the bulk
air temperature Xsa and the potential driving the evaporation
process is (Xsw − Xsa ). The water will be cooled due to evap-
oration until the driving force is positive, i.e. until the local
water temperature is higher than the bulk air temperature, so
that the difference in saturation humidity ratios is positive.
The description of the process has to be modified in order to
capture the physics of the supersaturated air. It is assumed
that the heat and mass transfer coefficients are the same for
Fig. 4 Kinetics of evaporation for air containing mist
A. Klimanek
unsaturated and supersaturated air. Equation (8) is modified
to
 
dmw = β Xsw − Xsa dA (21)
The enthalpy of the air in Eq. (6) for supersaturated air is
given by
    a
has = cpa
a
Ta + Xsa r0 + cpv
a
Ta + X − Xsa cw Ta (22)
The remaining equations can be derived analogously to the
already analyzed unsaturated air case.
2.3 Solution Methods of Heat and Mass Transfer
There are various methods of solving the heat and mass
flow solution techniques, whose purpose is to determine the
draft of the cooling tower, methods for heat and mass trans-
fer are often referred to as the thermodynamic computa-
tions [50, 82]. The most commonly used is the method de-
veloped by Merkel [59]. Though this approach was first pub-
lished in 1925, it enjoys popularity due to simplicity and rel-
atively good accuracy under normal operating conditions of
cooling towers. The method has been developed over years
and its modifications are often used in more accurate compu-
tations maintained the main assumptions of Merkel with few
corrections. An alternative approach is the effectiveness-
NTU (e-NTU) method applied to wet-cooling towers by
Jaber and Webb [30]. This approach is based on the same
simplifying assumptions as the Merkel method and produces
similar results [48]. The e-NTU is particularly useful in the
solution of the crossflow cooling tower fills [46] where the
heat and mass transfer problem is described by partial differ-
ential equations. This method will not be presented in detail
in the paper. The detailed derivation of the e-NTU method
for air-water vapor systems can be found in [51]. The most
accurate method of analysis, based on the equations given in
Sects. 2.1 and 2.2, is the Poppe method [70].
A detailed discussion and comparison of these three ap-
proaches is presented in works of Kloppers and Kröger [44,
47, 48].
2.3.1 Merkel Method
Detailed derivation and discussion on the Merkel method
can be found in the literature [11, 48, 51, 95]. The Merkel
method can be derived from the accurate equations given in
Sects. 2.1 and 2.2 applying the following main assumptions
of Merkel:
– the water loss due to evaporation is negligible
– the Lewis factor is equal unity
– the driving potential for the process of heat and mass
transfer is the difference in the enthalpy of saturated air
at the air-water interface and the enthalpy in the bulk air
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 67

– the outlet air is assumed to be saturated with water vapor water mass flow rate is constant. The result is the Merkel
in order to determine air temperature equation
Combining the mass (3) and energy (5) balances yields  Twi w dT
βaf Az H cw w
  Me = = (32)
dTw ma 1 dha dX mw Two (hw
as − h a)
= w dz
− Tw (23)
dz mw cw dz
The dimensionless group at the left hand side is called the
The heat released at the air water interface is equal to the Merkel number. The enthalpy difference in the denominator
change in air enthalpy as given by Eq. (20), which combined is the driving potential for the process in the Merkel method.
with Eq. (16) can be written as The water temperatures at the inlet and the outlet are as-
sumed to be known, which is usual situation for both, de-
dha  
ma = βaf Az he Xsw − X sign calculations and performance tests. Equation (32) can-
dz not be solved on its own since the function of bulk air en-
 a 

+ Lef cpa + Xcpv

a
(Tw − Ta ) (24) thalpy ha is not known at the subsequent stages of the in-
tegration path. The air enthalpy increase can be calculated
The enthalpy of the air saturated with water vapor at the air- from a discretized form of the simplified energy balance
water interface evaluated at water temperature is Eq. (31)
 
as = cpa Tw + Xs r0 + cpv Tw
hw w w w
(25) w ΔT
mw cw w
ha,j +1 = ha,j + (33)
ma
The difference in the enthalpy of saturated air at the air water
interface and the enthalpy in the bulk air can be written as where water temperature range is divided into equally
 w   a  spaced segments of length ΔTw .
hwas − ha = cpa + Xcpv Tw − cpa + Xcpv Ta
w a
The model allows predicting the state of the leaving air
 
+ Xsw − X he (26) in terms of enthalpy. If the enthalpy is known, the outlet air
temperature can be determined only if the humidity ratio is
Ignoring the small differences in the specific heats evaluated known (cf. Eq. (6)). In the Merkel method, it is assumed that
at water and air temperatures the difference becomes the air leaving the fill is saturated with water vapor which
 w  allows determination of its temperature.
as − ha ≈ (cpa + Xcpv )(Tw − Ta ) + Xs − X he
hw (27) In sizing computations, the water outlet temperature Two
Using Eq. (27), the difference in water and air temperatures is a known design parameter and the fill type, area and height
(Tw − Ta ) appearing in Eq. (24) can be expressed as are to be determined. In rating calculations, the outlet wa-
ter temperature is usually not known and for a given fill
as − ha − (Xs − X)he
hw w
type it is the quantity to be determined. For performance
Tw − Ta = (28)
(cpa + Xcpv ) tests this is the parameter that is compared against the ex-
perimental data. In any case, the Merkel number on the left
Here cpa and cpv represent the specific heats at average air- hand side of Eq. (32) must be known. This quantity is ob-
water temperature. Introducing Eq. (28) into Eq. (24) and
tained from experiments performed usually on small scale
applying the assumption of Merkel that Lef = 1 yields
test facilities. In general, the Merkel number depends on
dha   the air and water mass flow rates. Sometimes the depen-
ma = βaf Az hw
as − ha (29) dence of temperature difference between air and water is
dz
also introduced. The most commonly used correlations to
The assumption that the amount of evaporating water is neg- define the Merkel number are presented at the end of this
ligible introduced into the mass balance (3) produces section.
dmw dX Equation (32) together with (33) can be solved by any nu-
=0→ =0 (30) merical integration technique. The most commonly used is
dz dz
the four point Chebyshev method recommended as a method
Introducing the result into Eq. (23) yields of choice by the Cooling Tower Institute [29]. As stated by
dTw ma dha Kröger [48], this integration technique essentially uses four
= w dz
(31) intervals to determine the integral and is very accurate when
dz mw cw
compared with Simpson method based on 100 intervals.
Equations (29) and (31) are the final result of the Merkel The Merkel method accuracy is acceptable under stan-
method. Usually they are combined and integrated. The in- dard operating conditions of cooling towers. The inaccuracy
tegration is performed with the Merkel assumption that the is a result of the critical assumptions of Merkel. It can be
68 A. Klimanek

expected, that the model predictions deviate considerably in
situations when the ambient air is very dry and warm. In
such a situation the air leaving the fill can still be dry and
far from saturation. For similar reasons Merkel’s model pro-
duce unacceptable errors for the case of cold and humid air.
The moist air can become supersaturated very quickly in the
fill and be far above the saturation at the outlet. The behavior
of the Merkel method under various ambient air conditions
has been presented in [48]. The Merkel number predicted
by the standard Merkel method, for a given water tempera-
ture difference is lower than that of more accurate methods.
In the analysis performed by Kloppers and Kröger [47] for
an expanded metal fill the difference in the Merkel num-
ber amounted 9 % when compared with the more accurate
Poppe method (to be discussed later).
The deficiencies of he Merkel method has motivated sev-
eral authors to improve the formulation [6, 63, 78]. The im-
provements usually concern more accurate integration tech-
niques, the process driving potential and diminishing the ef-
fect of neglected water evaporation. Due to its simplicity the
model of Merkel and its improved versions are widely ac-
cepted in the cooling tower design computations and per-
formance prediction. The Merkel type methods are used in
the standards of water cooling towers such as British Stan-
dards [81] and Cooling Tower Institute [29].
Transfer Characteristics of Fills In practice the Merkel
number is obtained from experiments for a given fill type
and height. There are variety of correlations describing the
performance of the fill. The correlations are determined
from a series of measurements typically conducted on a
small scale experimental rigs. In general, the Merkel number
depends on the air and water mass flow rates. The correla-
tions usually are determined for a given fill height though
more advanced models include the influence of fill height.
The most commonly used correlations are of the forms
 b
Ga
Me = a
Gw
(34)
is employed. The coefficients obtained when using Poppe
and Merkel methods are different. Therefore, Kröger [48]
recommends to use the same method when determining the
fill performance from the small scale experiments and when
modeling the genuine cooling tower.
2.3.2 Poppe Method
The Poppe method [70] is free from the critical assump-
tions of Merkel and is based on the equations presented in
Sects. 2.1 and 2.2. The only assumption made is that of ne-
glecting the small difference in the specific heats given in
Eq. (27). Without the assumptions of Merkel, the method is
capable of predicting both, the outlet humidity ratio as well
as the amount of water evaporated in the fill accurately [10].
This improves the overall accuracy of the cooling tower sim-
ulations.
Poppe proposed to solve the set of differential equations
in a form such that the dependent variables are the humidity
ratio X and air enthalpy ha . The independent variable is the
water temperature Tw . Thus, the derivatives dha /dTw and
dX/dTw need to be found. The appropriate equations can
be derived by rearranging Eq. (23)
dha w
mw cw cw Tw dmw dz
= + w (38)
dTw ma ma dz dTw
and dividing the mass balance equation (3) by dTw to obtain
dX 1 dmw dz
= (39)
dTw ma dz dTw
The heat released at the air-water interface must be equal
to the enthalpy change of both the air as well as the water
given in Eq. (5). Taking the change in water enthalpy only
and equating with the total heat transfer rate from Eq. (15)
yields
dmw
w dTw
w
cw Tw + mw cw
dz dz
 w 

= he β Xs − X + α(Tw − Ta ) af Az (40)
Me = aGa b1 Gw b2 (35)
 b1 Substituting the evaporation rate equation (19), into Eq. (40)
Ga the derivative dTw /dz appearing in both Eq. (38) and
Me = a H b2 (36)
Gw Eq. (39) can be calculated. Since the derivative dmw /dz
is given by Eq. (19), Eqs. (38) and (39) can be determined
a Gw + a2 Ga Gw
Me = a1 Gb1 b2 b3 b4
(37) explicitly in the derivatives dha /dTw and dX/dTw
where H is the fill height, Ga = ma /Az and Gw = mw /Az dha mw cww [c Le (T − T ) + h (X w − X)]
ph f w a e s
are the air and water mass flux densities, respectively. The =
dTw ma [cph Lef (Tw − Ta ) + (he − cw Tw )(Xsw − X)]
w
coefficients a, a1 , a2 , b, b1 , b2 , b3 , b4 are determined ex-
(41)
perimentally by solving the right hand side of Eq. (32) with
dX mw cww (X w − X)
experimentally determined water inlet and outlet tempera- = s
tures and water and air mass flow rates. The same corre- dTw ma [cph Lef (Tw − Ta ) + (he − cw
w T )(X w − X)]
w s
lations are used when the presented below Poppe method (42)
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 69

As can be seen, the air temperature Ta appears in the equa- The right hand side integral in Eq. (47) can be calculated
tions above. This quantity is not known when integrating by appending additional differential equation to the set of
the equations. Thus, additional functional dependence of the equations composed of Eqs. (43) and (44). The derivative
derivative dTa /dTw should be introduced and integrated to- dX/dTw can be introduced from Eq. (44) to give
gether with Eqs. (41) and (42). To circumvent this problem, dMep   
the difference of enthalpy (hwas − ha ) is introduced instead of = cw
w
/ he − cww
Tw Xsw − X
dTw
the difference in temperatures (Tw − Ta ). This can be done   w 

by making use of Eq. (28) with neglected small differences + Lef hw as − ha − he Xs − X (49)
in the specific heats evaluated at water and air temperatures.
Equation (49) can be solved together with Eqs. (43), (44)
The result is
and (45) to give the final value of the Merkel number. Equa-
dha  w   tion (49) is independent of Eqs. (43) and (44) which means
= mw cw
w
he Xs − X + Lef hw as − ha
dTw that it does not affect the dependent variables.
 

   The Lewis factor Lef appearing in the governing equa-

− he Xsw − X / ma he − cww
Tw Xsw − X
  w 

tions has to be specified in order to solve the set. Poppe

+ Lef hw as − ha − he Xs − X (43) applied the Lewis factor relationship proposed by Bošn-
jaković [11] defining the Lewis factor for air-water vapor
dX  w 
   systems as a function of the air humidity and saturation hu-
= mw cw
w
Xs − X / ma he − cw w
Tw Xsw − X midity ratios
dTw
  w 

 w  
+ Lef hw 2/3 Xs + 0.622 Xsw + 0.622 −1
as − ha − he Xs − X (44) Lef = 0.866 − 1 ln
X + 0.622 X + 0.622
Equations (43) and (44) also cannot be solved until the (50)
change of water mass flow rate along the fill height is known.
To account for the changes of the water flow rate a dis- Relationship (50) is defined for unsaturated air. Should the
cretized mass balance equation (3) is used. The water mass air become supersaturated, the model is modified by apply-
flow rate at any level of the integration path is ing Eqs. (21) and (22) to the governing set. The enthalpy
derivative can then be written as
mw = mwi − ma (Xo − X) (45)
dha mw w  w  w 

= c 1 + cw Tw Xs − Xsa / Lef hw as − has
where mwi is the inlet water mass flow rate at the top of the dTw ma w
fill, Xo is the humidity ratio of the air leaving the fill and    
+ cw
w
Tw X − Xsa + he Xsa − Xsw
X is the humidity ratio at the same level as mw . Since the  w  

outlet air humidity ratio Xo is not known a priori, it has to + cw Tw − he Xsa − Xsw (51)
be assumed and adjusted iteratively by repetitive solution of
the humidity ratio derivative is
Eqs. (43), (44) and (45) until the resultant Xo converges.
Similarly to the Merkel method a Merkel number ac- dX mw w  w  
cording to Poppe theory Mep is introduced. Following = cw Xs − Xsa / Lef hw as − has
dTw ma
Kröger [51], Mep can be derived by combining the mass    
+ cw
w
Tw X − Xsa + he Xsa − Xsw
balance equation (3) with the evaporation rate equation (19)  w  

to obtain + cw Tw − he Xsa − Xsw (52)

βaf Az dz ma dX the Merkel number derivative is
= (46)
mw mw (Xsw − X) dMep   
= cww
as − has + cw Tw X − Xs
/ Lef hw w a
Multiplying the right hand side by dTw /dTw and integrating dTw
both sides yields    w  

+ he Xsa − Xsw + cw Tw − he Xsa − Xsw

 H  Twi (53)
βaf Az dz ma dX/dTw
Mep = = dTw (47)
Two mw (Xs − X)
mw w
0 For supersaturated air, the humidity ratio of air appear-
As shown by [51], usually the changes in water mass flow ing in Eq. (50) is replaced with the saturation humidity ratio
rate in the left hand side integral can be neglected so that the evaluated at air temperature Xsa . The equation becomes
 w  
Merkel number is Xs + 0.622 Xsw + 0.622 −1
Lef = 0.8662/3 − 1 ln
βaf Az H Xsa + 0.622 Xsa + 0.622
Mep = (48)
mw (54)
70
Equations (51), (52), (45) and (53) comprise the set to be
solved when the air becomes supersaturated.
In order to perform a test determining whether the air is
supersaturated, both the temperature and wet bulb tempera-
ture should be calculated. Moreover, this procedure has to be
performed iteratively. The governing equations can be inte-
grated by any numerical integration technique. Refer to [48]
for detailed information about the implementation of fourth
order Runge-Kutta technique to the solution of these equa-
tions.
Similarly to the Merkel theory, the Merkel number ac-
cording to Poppe is extracted from experimental data using
the Poppe method, and correlation of Merkel number depen-
dence is created.
As can be seen from Eqs. (43), (44) and (45) as well
as (51), (52) there is no information about the heat or mass
transfer coefficient required to solve the set. The mass trans-
fer coefficient, however, is hidden in the Merkel number (49)
or (53) but, as explained before, these equations are inde-
pendent of the former, and do not have to be solved simul-
taneously. In fact, the air enthalpy and humidity ratio can be
obtained only if the outlet water temperature Two is known.
When this temperature is not known, as it is the case in rat-
ing calculations, Eqs. (49) or (53) have to be solved in the
governing set. The value of the Merkel number can be ob-
tained from the earlier established experimental correlation.
The governing set of equations is then solved with guessed
outlet water temperature. The guessed temperature has to
be adjusted and the procedure repeated until the resultant
Merkel number from Eqs. (49) or (53) converges to the Mep
determined from the experimental correlation.
Therefore, in order to have a complete model based on
the Poppe method, the experimental Merkel number corre-
lation has to be known.
2.3.3 An Alternative Approach
The alternative approach proposed in [40] is based on the
same governing equations as the Poppe method but with-
out any simplifying assumptions. The equations are reorga-
nized and written in a form such that the spatial coordinate
is the independent variable instead of the water temperature
used in the Poppe method. Solution of these equations gives
the more natural, spatial distributions of the dependent vari-
ables. This alternative approach uses an accurate adaptive
step size control integration technique. Comparison of the
alternative approach and the Poppe method have shown neg-
ligible differences in the results showing that the simplifying
assumptions applied in the Poppe method and other integra-
tion technique are unimportant [40].
The purpose of the development of the alternative ap-
proach is to embed it into the CFD model of the cooling
tower. However, the method can be used for standard calcu-
lations of evaporative cooling. The two directional exchange
A. Klimanek
of data between the model of the fill and the CFD solver en-
compasses
– imported from the CFD solver by the model of the fill. In-
let air and water temperatures, Tai and Twi , respectively,
inlet air humidity ratio Xi , inlet water mass flow rate mwi
and mass flow rate of dry air ma ,
– imported from the model of the fill by the CFD solver.
Spatial distribution of the mass (water vapor) and heat
sources, outlet temperature and mass flow rate of the wa-
ter.
With such model of the exchange of data, the low dimen-
sional model of the fill should produce the spatial distribu-
tions of heat and mass sources. The independent variable of
both the Merkel and Poppe method is the temperature of the
water, rather than the spatial coordinate. As the functional
dependence of dTw /dz is not known, the spatial distribu-
tion of the mass and energy sources remains unknown in
both Merkel and Poppe method. Another difficulty in us-
ing the aforementioned techniques is that they both require
the knowledge of the outlet water temperature Two . As al-
ready explained, solution of the governing equations using
Merkel or Poppe method with the unknown water temper-
ature is possible. This, however, requires additional loop in
the iterative solution procedure.
In order to overcome these difficulties an alternative ap-
proach has been proposed. The Poppe method of analysis is
the most accurate method known from the literature. There-
fore, the alternative approach is derived from the same as-
sumptions as the Poppe method. The developed technique
uses the vertical coordinate z as the independent variable.
The dependent variables are water temperature Tw , air tem-
perature Ta , air humidity ratio X and water mass flow
rate mw . The use of these variables requires simultaneous
solution of four coupled ordinary differential equations. The
results of the solution are the spatial distributions of the
dependent variables from which the spatial distributions of
heat and mass transferred between the phases, can readily be
obtained. The advantage in this approach is also that the air
temperature and humidity ratio are known at each stage of
the integration. This makes it easy to determine, whether the
air is supersaturated with no additional iterative procedures,
as required in the Poppe method.
Governing Equations for Unsaturated Air Equations (3),
(5), (19) and (20) comprise a set of four ordinary differential
equations (ODEs). Substituting Eq. (8) into mass balance
equation (3) produces
dX βaf Az (Xsw − X)
= (55)
dz ma
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 71

Differentiation of Eq. (6) with respect to z yields the spatial Eq. (16) should be modified so that the Lewis factor is de-
derivative of the enthalpy of air fined as

dha  a    dX α
a dTa
= cpa + Xcpv + r0 + cpv
a Lef = (60)
dz dz
Ta
dz
(56) a
β(cpa + Xsa cpv
a + cw
a (X − X a ))
s

Combining Eqs. (56), (20), (55), and introducing the Lewis Rearranging the governing equations analogously to that
factor (16) yields used in the unsaturated case, brings the equations to a set
of four ordinary differential equations explicit in the deriva-
dTa  a  tives of the unknown dependent variables
= βaf Az Lef (Tw − Ta ) cpa + cpv
a
X
dz
 w 
 a 
dmw  
+ cpv Tw − cpv
a
Ta (Xs − X) / ma cpa + cpv
a
X = βaf Az Xsw − Xsa (61)
dz
(57)
dX βaf Az (Xsw − Xsa )
= (62)
Introducing Eqs. (20) and (19) into the energy balance (5) dz ma
the spatial derivative of the water temperature can be calcu- dTa βaf Az a  
=− cpa Lef (Ta − Tw ) − Xsw r0 + cpv w
Tw
lated from dz ma
    
dTw  a  + cw Lef (Ta − Tw ) X − Xsa + Ta Xsw − Xsa
a
= βaf Az Lef (Tw − Ta ) cpa + cpv
a
X  

dz
 
  + Xsa r0 + cpv
a
Lef (Ta − Tw ) + cpv
w
Tw
+ r0 + cpv
w
Tw − c w
w
Tw (Xs − X) / mw cw
w
(58)
 dXsa  
a
cpa + cw
a
X+ r0 + cpv
a
Ta − c w
a
Ta
Equations (19), (55), (57) and (58) comprise a set of four dTa

ordinary differential equations explicit in the derivatives of  a 
the unknown dependent variables. The Lewis factor Lef ap- + Xsa cpv − cwa
(63)
pearing in the governing equations can be found by employ-
dTw   
ing an analogy between heat and mass transfer. In the lit- = βaf Az r0 + cpvw
Tw − c w
w
Tw Xsw − Xsa
erature there are a few possible choices of the relationship dz
 a  
defining the Lewis factor. The most frequently used for wet- + Lef (Tw − Ta ) cpa + cw a
X − Xsa
cooling towers [43, 51, 70, 90, 91] is the already introduced 
 w 
relationship proposed by Bošnjaković [11]. In Eq. (50), the + cpv
a
Xsa / cw mw (64)
Lewis factor is a function of the air humidity and saturation
humidity ratios. Equation (50) will be applied in this analy- Determination of Mass Transfer Coefficient Before the
sis in the case of unsaturated air. governing equations are solved, the value of the heat α or
mass β transfer coefficient has to be determined. The only
Governing Equations for Supersaturated Air As explained feasible method of getting this quantities is an experiment.
in Sect. 2.2, the governing equations have to be modified in An elegant and robust technique of retrieving the coefficient
order to capture the physics of the supersaturated air. The from the measurements is the inverse analysis [52, 68]. This
approach is, however, seldom used in the context of the cool-
derivation of the equations for this case is given below. The
ing towers. Traditionally, the mass transfer coefficient is in-
spatial derivative of enthalpy of supersaturated air given by
cluded in Merkel’s number
Eq. (22) is
 H
 βaf Az dz
dhas   dXsa  a  Me = (65)
= r0 + cpv a
Ta − c w
a
Ta + Xsa cpv − cw
a
0 mw
dz dTa
 which is determined by solving the governing equations
a dTa dX
+ cpa
a
+ Xcw + cw a
Ta (59) with the experimentally determined water outlet tempera-
dz dz
ture. As already mentioned, it is very important to use the
The derivative dXsa /dTa is a known function of temperature. same method of analysis in both the determination of the
The explicit expression can be obtained by expressing the Merkel number correlation from experiments and the sim-
saturation pressure in Eq. (9) as a function of temperature ulations of the cooling tower. Therefore, in this approach
and differentiating the result. the Merkel number according to Poppe method is appropri-
In the case of supersaturated air, the Lewis factor given ate as these two techniques are based on the same princi-
in Eq. (54) is applied. In order to take into account the mist pal equations. The mass transfer coefficient β or the product
in the supersaturated air, the specific heat of humid air in βaf Az can be retrieved from the experimentally determined
72
Merkel number. This, however, needs to be done iteratively,
since the integral on the right hand side of Eq. (65) is not
known a priori. The initial guess for the iterative procedure
can be
mwi
(βaf Az )j = Me (66)
H
where Me is the Merkel number known from experiments.
The governing equations are solved using the initial guess
of (βaf Az )j , so that the left hand side of Eq. (65) can be
determined by appending to the integrated set a relation-
ship
dMej (βaf Az )j
= (67)
dz mw
The product (βaf Az )j is adjusted until the obtained Mej
number approaches the experimental value Me. Since the
water mass flow rate is not changing much, the initial guess
(66) is a good approximation and the convergence is ob-
tained after few iterations.
It should be stressed that in the alternative method appli-
cation of the experimentally determined Merkel number is
cumbersome as it requires additional iterative procedure in
the solution procedure. It can be assumed that the βaf Az
variable is independent on the vertical position z. Thus, a
more comfortable approach is to determine this parameter
experimentally directly from the mass balance established
as a result of the experiment.
Solution of Governing Equations Under the assumptions
made when deriving the governing equations, the mass and
heat transfer problem in the fill is described by a set of
four ordinary differential equations explicit in the deriva-
tives of the unknown functions. The equations both for sat-
urated and unsaturated air can be recast in the following
form
dmw
= f1 (mw , X, Ta , Tw )
dz
dX
= f2 (mw , X, Ta , Tw )
dz
(68)
dTa
= f3 (mw , X, Ta , Tw )
dz
dTw
= f4 (mw , X, Ta , Tw )
dz
The problem is well defined, as the number of bound-
ary conditions (BCs) is equal to the number of unknowns.
Should all the boundary condition be defined at one point
(bottom or top of the fill), distribution of the unknown
functions: Ta , Tw , X and mw could be obtained by any
standard ODE solver. However, the problem at hand be-
longs to the class of two point boundary value prob-
A. Klimanek
lems (TPBVP), for which some of the boundary con-
ditions are known at one boundary point while the re-
maining at the other. The boundary conditions known at
the bottom of the fill (z = 0) are the air temperature
Ta and humidity ratio X. At the top of the fill (z = H )
the water temperature Tw and mass flow rate mw are
known. The boundary conditions at hand can be summa-
rized as
Ta (z = 0) = Tai
X(z = 0) = Xi
(69)
Tw (z = H ) = Twi
mw (z = H ) = mwi
However, as the BCs at the starting point (z = 0) are not
sufficient to obtain a unique solution, the missing BCs
at the bottom of the fill need to be guessed and itera-
tively adjusted so that the known boundary conditions at
the top of the fill are satisfied. The shooting method [71]
is used to solve the TPBVP, applying multidimensional
globally convergent Newton-Raphson method to obtain the
global solution. The differential equations are integrated us-
ing the adaptive step size control Runge-Kutta technique.
The solver automatically adjusts the integration step in
such a way that the error is kept within a prescribed inter-
val [71].
Initial Conditions Integration of the set from z = 0 to
z = H yields the values of the four dependent variables
at each intermediate integration step. As the solution of
the governing equations requires iterative adjustment of the
guessed boundary conditions, a good initial guess of these
conditions leads to fewer iterations and shorter computa-
tional times. Therefore the initial values of the unknown
boundary conditions at z = 0 are selected according to ap-
proximate solutions. The water outlet temperature is taken
from experimental approximation given in [43]
Twi + 2Twb + Tai
Two = (70)
4
where Twb is the wetbulb temperature of the inlet air and
the indices i and o indicate the inlet and outlet parameters,
respectively. This approximation is used for high inlet air
temperatures only. For low air temperatures, the outlet wa-
ter temperature is calculated using the energy balance (5)
assuming that
dmw Tai + Twi
≈ 0, Tao ≈ , Xo ≈ Xso
a
(71)
dz 2
a is the saturation humidity ratio evaluated at the
where Xso
approximated air outlet temperature Tao . The outlet water
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 73

temperature can be then calculated as and 8, where the nodes indicate the values calculated with
ma the adaptive step size integration (calc.) and the spline inter-
Two = Twi − (hao − hai ) (72) polation (int.). As can be seen, the profiles of humidity and
mw cw
saturation humidity ratios do not cross. This indicates that
The outlet water mass flow rate can be estimated as the air does not become supersaturated and only the first set
 a  of equations for unsaturated air is used. In Fig. 7 the loss due
mwo = mwi − ma Xso − Xi (73)

At every integration step the integration procedure performs

a test whether the air is unsaturated or supersaturated. De-
pending on the condition either equations for unsaturated
(X ≤ Xsa ) or supersaturated air (X > Xsa ) are invoked. As
the integration is adaptive, the values of the unknown func-
tions are known at some not evenly distributed points. In
order to obtain the values of the dependent variables at any
desired position z, the original results are interpolated using
cubic splines.

Numerical Examples Three numerical examples of fill

analysis are presented below. They show particular situa-
tions occurring in wet-cooling towers when the ambient air
parameters change. The analysis was performed for an ex-
Fig. 5 Case #1. Air and water temperature distributions
panded metal film fill of height H = 1.2 m and cross-section
area Az = 1 m2 . The required Merkel number expression
was acquired from [43] and is given by
Me
= 1.380517m0.112753
w m0.698206
a
H
− 0.517075m0.461071
w m0.681271
a (74)

The expression was obtained from experimental data ac-

cording to Poppe’s theory and therefore can be directly ap-
plied in this study. The air and water mass flow rates are
chosen to be equal ma = mw . The inlet parameters for all
three cases are summarized in Table 1. The product βaf Az
is determined from the experimental Merkel number using
the iterative procedure described in Sect. 2.3.3. The first ex-
ample (case #1) presents the distributions of the dependent
Fig. 6 Case #1. Humidity and saturation humidity ratios distribution
variables for the case when the air does not become super-
saturated and the local temperature difference between water
and air is always positive. This means that both the evapo-
ration and convection heat fluxes are from the water to the
air. The results of the analysis are shown in Figs. 5, 6, 7,

Table 1 Input data for numerical examples

Case #1 Case #2 Case #3

mwi , kg/s 3.0 3.0 3.0

ma , kg/s 3.0 3.0 3.0
Xi , kg/kg 0.001 0.002 0.012
Twi , °C 37.0 37.0 37.0
Tai , °C 20.0 35.0 20.0
Me 1.8613 1.8613 1.8613
Fig. 7 Case #1. Distribution of water mass flow rate in the fill
74 A. Klimanek

Fig. 8 Case #1. Distribution of the Merkel number in the fill Fig. 10 Case #2. Air and water temperature distributions

Fig. 11 Case #2. Humidity and saturation humidity ratios distribution

Fig. 9 Case #1. Distributions of heat and mass sources in the fill

to evaporation of water is shown as a distribution of water

mass flow rate. In Fig. 8 the value of the Merkel number in
subsequent integration steps is shown. In Fig. 9 calculated
distributions of heat and mass sources are shown. Such dis-
tributions for a given input data are to be used in the CFD
simulation.
In case #2 the situation often appearing in hot and dry am-
bient air conditions is considered. As shown in Fig. 10 the
temperature profiles cross. The temperature of the air flow-
ing upwards is decreasing in the bottom part of the fill and
starts to increase in the upper part, however the air leaving
the fill is even cooler than the inlet air. In the bottom part the
convective heat transfer is from the water to the air since the
Fig. 12 Case #3. Air and water temperature distributions
local temperature difference (Tw − Ta ) < 0. As can be seen
the water temperature is constantly decreasing and the cool-
ing process works appropriately. This is possible due to the do not cross which indicates that the air does not become
very dry air and the evaporative heat transfer dominating in supersaturated. The third example (case #3) shows situation
the total heat transfer even in the bottom part where the con- when the temperatures do not cross but the air becomes su-
vective heat transfer is negative. In Fig. 11 the humidity and persaturated. In this case, sets of equations for both unsatu-
saturation humidity distributions are presented. The curves rated and supersaturated air are used. In Figs. 12 and 13 dis-
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Fig. 13 Case #3. Humidity and saturation humidity ratios distribution
tributions of temperatures and humidity ratios are presented,
respectively.
As can be seen, the adaptive step size control integra-
tion technique required more steps to be taken in the vicin-
ity of the crossing point of humidity ratios. As described
in Sect. 2.3.3, in spite of the fact that the air is supersatu-
rated, the water is cooled by both convection heat transfer
and evaporation. It is also possible that both the air is super-
saturated and the local temperature difference between wa-
ter and air negative. Then the water will be warmed up by
the air via the convective heat transfer and the excess water
vapor in the bulk air will condense on the air-water interface
or its vicinity.
Equivalence of the Alternative and Poppe Methods The al-
ternative approach and the Poppe method are equivalent in
the sense that the same assumptions are made when formu-
lating the heat and mass transfer mathematical model. The
only difference is that the Poppe method neglects the small
difference in the specific heats when determining the differ-
ence of water and air temperature given by Eq. (28). As a
result, practically the same set of governing equations are
solved in both cases. The differential equations in the Poppe
method are accompanied with an algebraic equation of mass
balance that requires additional iterative loop in the solution
procedure. Other iterative methods need to be invoked when
determining if the air is unsaturated or supersaturated, ac-
cording to Kloppers and Kröger [48].
The difference in the form of the solved equations is that
the Poppe method takes the water temperature Tw as the in-
dependent variable and the dependent variables are the air
enthalpy ha and air humidity ratio X. This approach does
not allow to determine the spatial distributions of the depen-
dent variables as the distribution of the temperature of the
water along the height of the fill is unknown. As already
mentioned, for the coupling of the model of the fill with
the CFD solver, the spatial distributions of heat and mass
sources are required [36, 37]. The proposed and the Poppe
75
Table 2 Comparison of the results obtained with Poppe method by
Kloppers [43] and the alternative approach
Kloppers [43] Alternative Relative
approach error %
Two , °C 27.77 27.79 0.07
Me 0.7341 0.7341 0.00
Tao , °C 24.70 24.67 0.12
Xo , kg/kg 0.02226 0.02132 4.22
Xsa , kg/kg 0.01972 0.01970 0.10
mwo , kg/s 3.932 3.936 0.10
hao , kJ/kg 75.378 75.198 0.24
methods are therefore equivalent, and as will be shown be-
low the obtained global results of both methods are very
close to each other. Application of the adaptive step size con-
trol as implemented in the alternative method, yields how-
ever better accuracy than the Poppe technique. The method
was shown to adapt the step of the integration in regions
where the regime of unsaturated air changed to supersatu-
rated.
Validation of the Alternative Approach The alternative
method has been validated in [40] against benchmark re-
sults acquired from [43]. Here the results obtained by ap-
plication of the Poppe method to the analysis of an ex-
panded metal fill of height H = 1.878 m are compared
with the alternative method first. The following input data
were used: atmospheric pressure p = 101712.27 Pa, air
inlet temperature Tai = 9.7 °C, air inlet humidity ratio
Xi = 0.00616336 kg/kg dry air, air mass flow rate ma =
4.134 kg/s, water inlet temperature Twi = 39.67 °C and wa-
ter inlet mass flow rate mwi = 3.999 kg/s. In the calcu-
lations performed by Kloppers [43] the outlet water tem-
perature is known Two = 27.77 °C and the Merkel num-
ber according to Poppe theory is calculated. The calculated
Merkel number is Me = 0.7341. In the computations per-
formed in this study, the product βaf Az is determined from
this Merkel number using the iterative procedure described
earlier. As the result, the calculated water temperature is de-
termined and is compared with the measured value. The re-
sults of the comparison are presented in Table 2. As can be
seen the results are very close to each other. The slight dis-
crepancy can be due to application different integration tech-
niques and number of integration intervals. Another source
of error may be different functions representing temperature
dependence of specific heats and saturation pressure. Spa-
tial distributions of the variables and the Merkel number are
presented in Figs. 14, 15, 16, and 17 where both the results
of the calculations with adaptive step size control technique
as well as the spline interpolants are shown. As can be seen
in Fig. 15 close to z = 0.4 m the humidity and saturation
76
Fig. 14 Air and water temperature distributions
Fig. 15 Humidity and saturation humidity ratios distribution
Fig. 16 Distribution of water mass flow rate
humidity ratios cross. It is visible that the air became super-
saturated and the equations for supersaturated air are applied
after the crossing point. As can be seen the adaptive integra-
tion technique requires a few more steps in the vicinity of
the saturation region increasing the accuracy of the calcula-
A. Klimanek
Fig. 17 Distribution of the Merkel number
tions in that region, whereas the steps can be much longer in
other parts of the integration space.
A second validation computations have been performed
for a full scale cooling tower. Similarly to the first vali-
dation case, results obtained by Kloppers [43] who used
the Poppe method were compared with the alternative ap-
proach. The Merkel number for the full scale tower is the
sum of the Merkel numbers of all three heat and mass trans-
fer regions, namely the spray, fill and rain zones. The num-
ber amounted Me = 1.5548. The inlet air temperature was
Tai = 15.45 °C, inlet humidity ratio Xi = 0.008127 kg/kg
dry air, air mass flow rate ma = 16672.19 kg/s, water in-
let temperature Twi = 40.0 °C and water inlet mass flow
rate mwi = 12500.0 kg/s. The results again showed good
agreement between both methods. Details of the calcula-
tions as well as discussion of the results have been presented
in [40].
Presented validation of heat and mass transfer model
conducted on fill computations in this paper and the entire
cooling tower analysis [40] show good agreement between
data obtained with the Poppe method and the alternative ap-
proach. This confirms that the proposed approach is prop-
erly implemented and equivalent to the Poppe analysis. It
should be however stressed that the alternative approach has
certain advantages discussed earlier, that make this method
a good option for heat and mass transfer in the counterflow
fills.
3 Application of the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition
3.1 Introduction
To account for the interaction between the tower and the en-
vironment, the computational domain, where CFD model is
defined, should be of the order of a few hundred meters. To
reproduce the exact geometry of the fill, very fine mesh of
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
the order of a few millimeters should be used. Such a mesh
would lead to prohibitively long computations, thus the fill
in the model, to be presented later in this study, has been
treated as a porous medium divided into vertical conduits.
The distribution of the mass and energy sources in each con-
duit is obtained by invoking the 1D model of heat and mass
transfer discussed in Sect. 2.
Though such an approach leads to significant economy
of the execution time, the model is still numerically very in-
tensive. The solution of a set of ODEs with boundary condi-
tions specified at two boundary points (TPBVP) is not very
time consuming when run on contemporary computers. The
execution time can be estimated to be ∼10 s. However, to
achieve reasonable accuracy, the number of vertical con-
duits into which the fill is divided reaches for realistic 3D
models a number of ∼104 . Furthermore, the coupling pro-
cedure between the CFD and fill models requires invoking
the fill models every few iterations performed by the CFD
code. This would lead to prohibitively long computational
times. Therefore a simplified and much faster, reduced or-
der model of the fill has been developed. The idea behind
the approach is based on the Proper Orthogonal–Radial Ba-
sis Functions network (POD-RBF). This tool has been first
used in the context of the inverse methods by Ostrowski [64,
67]. In the present study the approach proposed in [35, 42] is
presented. The POD-RBF network has been applied to ob-
tain a low dimensional, accurate and fast response approxi-
mation technique of representing the distribution of heat and
mass sources in the fill.
4 Proper Orthogonal Decomposition
Proper Orthogonal Decomposition is a technique aimed at
representing large number of vectors using minimum de-
grees of freedom by taking advantage of the correlation
between these vectors. The reduction of dimensionality is
achieved by expressing the vectors in a new, orthogonal co-
ordinate frame known as the POD basis. Using the termi-
nology of the Fourier series, the initial set of vectors is de-
composed into modes (POD basis vectors). A very impor-
tant property of the POD is its optimality. Among all pos-
sible decompositions of the vectors, the POD is the most
efficient in the sense, that for a given number of modes, the
projection on the subspace used for modelling the data, will
on average contain the most energy (information content)
possible [33]. POD can also be used as an approximation
technique to obtain low-dimensional approximation models
of a set of vectors being a response of a high-dimensional
process. Since the data set is decomposed into set of opti-
mal modes, the modes of the highest energy can represent
the whole set, reducing the representation to highly accurate
model of much less degrees of freedom (DOFs). Thus, the
77
objective in this sense, is to extract the dominant features of
the analyzed data set.
The decomposition can be applied to both continuous and
discrete domains. In most engineering problems simulations
are carried out by means of discrete models. Thus, the dis-
crete version of the method is the most frequently used and
from the application viewpoint, the discrete version of POD
will be presented.
The idea of POD is not new, as the first works were
published by Pearson in 1901 [69]. Hotelling [27, 28] and
Kosambi [49] reinvented the same idea in 1933 and 1943,
respectively. The applications of POD in many branches of
science, technology, economy and medicine are very wide.
The most important fields where POD has been used com-
prise: statistics [27, 28, 32], turbulence modelling [26, 80],
image processing [86], human face recognition [34], inverse
heat transfer [64–67], transient heat conduction problems
[8, 18, 19], reduced order models [31, 41] and many others.
As the technique has been reinvented several times in var-
ious branches of science and technology, the POD method
bears different names. Here are the most frequently used:
– Principal Component Analysis (PCA) [27, 28, 58, 60, 69]
– Karhunen-Loéve Decomposition (KLD) [32, 34]
– Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) [33, 54]
PCA is a statistical technique whose purpose is to obtain
a compact description of a multivariate stochastic observa-
tion by identification of its dependence structure. The PCA
can be equivalently seen as either a variance maximization
technique or a least-mean-squares technique [53].
The second method to realize POD is KLD. It has been
independently developed by Karhunen [32] and Loéve as
a theory regarding optimal series expansions of continuous
time stochastic processes. Results of the KLD extend the
PCA approach to the case of finite-dimensional spaces such
as space of continuous time functions. The KLD can be ex-
tended to discrete-time processes.
In both PCA and KLD approaches the problem is posed
as optimization problem. The matrix under consideration is
a covariance matrix to a random vector. The objective is to
find:
• maximum of the variance summation of principal compo-
nents—PCA
• minimum of the error after removal of a known number of
basis vectors—KLD
The result in both approaches is that the optimal basis vec-
tors are the eigenvectors of the covariance matrix corre-
sponding to the same random vector. In practice, the ran-
dom vectors are often replaced with patterned vectors being
a response of physical system.
The SVD approach is also known as a discrete version of
POD [14]. It uses the singular value decomposition to find
78
Fig. 18 A system when excited by input data producing a response
the optimal basis vectors of the discrete data set. By virtue
of the method, the orthogonality of the basis is automati-
cally preserved, guarantying also optimality of the modes.
Since experimental data are always discrete for most appli-
cations the SVD technique suffices. The discrete versions
of the PCA and KLD approaches are also often applied.
These techniques have been in detailed presented by Os-
trowski [64]. It should be howeber stressed, that all three
approaches are equivalent, which has been shown by Liang
et al. [53, 94].
The Proper Orthogonal Decomposition can be used as an
approximation technique. Large sets of data can be accu-
rately approximated using properties of the decomposition
and interpolation of the resulting amplitude matrix. Within
this study Radial Basis Functions are used as interpolants
and the data to be approximated are the results of solution
of the coupled heat and mass transfer in the cooling tower
fills.
4.1 Construction of the POD representation—SVD
Approach
Consider a physical system producing a response when ex-
ited by an input, as depicted in Fig. 18. The responses can
be obtained either from simulation or from experiments on
real objects. A single response from the object, when ex-
cited by input vector k corresponds to a single snapshot Ui .
Ei
= σi (82)
The object excited many times by a sequence of input vec-
tors k produces the snapshot matrix U, where vectors Ui are
columns of U. One can postulate the following representa-
tion of the snapshot matrix U
U = A (75)
where  is an N × M orthogonal basis matrix and A is a
M × M matrix of amplitudes, or

M
U= i A i (76)
i=1
where i is the ith column of matrix  and Ai is the ith
row of matrix A.
In the PCA approach the N × M real matrix U is de-
composed into the sum of component matrices Ei [60]. This
can be done by means of the singular value decomposition
(SVD) of U. Matrix U can be written as
U = SVDT (77)
A. Klimanek
where S is an N × N left singular vector matrix, D is an
M × M right singular vector matrix and V is a N × M
diagonal matrix of singular values σi of U arranged in a
descending order, so that σ1 ≥ σ2 ≥ · · · ≥ σr ≥ 0, where
r = min(N, M). In situations when the dimensions of the
matrix U are much different, i.e. N  M or N  M, the so
called thin or economy sized SVD is much smaller to store
and faster to compute than the full SVD. The economy sized
SVD reduces the dimensions of the right hand side matrices
in Eq. (77). For more information on computing the SVD
see references [5, 21, 84]. If the matrix U is real, the matri-
ces S and D are orthogonal, so
ST S = D T D = I (78)
where I is the identity matrix.
Decomposing matrix U into component matrices Ei of
the same dimensions as U gives
U = E1 + E2 + · · · + Ei + · · · + Er (79)
where r = min(N, M). Comparing Eqs. (77) and (79), it can
be noticed that
Ei = Si Vii DTi (80)
where upper index i stands for ith column of a matrix and
lower index i for ith row. The component matrices Ei are
orthogonal to each other so that
EiEj T = 0 for i = j (81)
and their norms are equal to the singular values σi stored
in V [60]
Therefore the matrices Ei can be thought of as the most im-
portant components or principal components of matrix U.
The singular values σi are stored in the descending order
and so are the contributions of each corresponding compo-
nent matrices, i.e. the biggest contribution is of the first ma-
trix E1, then the second E2, and so on.
Comparing Eqs. (75) and (79) one can notice that
Ei = i Ai (83)
and comparing Eqs. (80) and (83) it can be found that the
left singular vector matrix S corresponds to the orthogonal
basis matrix 
=S (84)
and the product of singular values matrix V and the right
singular vector matrix DT corresponds to the amplitude ma-
trix A
A = VDT (85)
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
thus both the orthogonal basis matrix  and the amplitude
matrix A in Eq. (75) can be determined using the SVD. As
shown in [35, 42, 64], matrix  and A can be determined
solving an eigenvalue problem of covariance matrix of U.
This approach is recommended for large problems since it
is usually faster than computing the SVD.
4.2 Low-Rank Approximation—Truncation of the POD
Basis
= σK+1
As mentioned before, the component matrices Ei are sorted
A −  (88)
in the same order as the singular values σi of U and their
corresponding contributions are also decreasing. The contri-
bution of each component matrix is often referred to in the
POD literature as energy. This terminology comes from in-
compressible fluid mechanics, where for the velocity field,
the squares of singular values (the eigenvalues of UUT or
UT U) are related to the kinetic energy of the fluid. This in-
terpretation cannot be directly extended to other fields, since
the correspondence of the eigenvalues to energy is generally
not true. However, the term energy will be used hereafter to
describe the contribution or information content of the com-
ponent matrices.
Since the norm of each component matrix Ei is equal
to its corresponding singular value σi , the measures of the
energy, for any arbitrary field, can be taken as the singular
values of U or their squares.
The complete POD representation given in Eqs. (75), (76)
or (79) can be used to exactly recover the matrix of field
variables U knowing the basis  and amplitudes A. Assume
N > M and rank of matrix U is r = M. If K (K < M) com-
ponent matrices Ei are taken to approximate matrix U this
representation is termed the approximation of rank K to the
matrix U and can be written as

K
U≈ Ei (86)
i=1
Taking only K component matrices is equivalent to truncat-
ing the basis matrix  to its first K columns. The columns
of the orthogonal basis are often referred to as modes. Since
the component matrices are sorted in a descending order of
singular values, so should be the columns of basis matrix .
As a result, the first mode corresponds to the largest singular
value, the second to the second largest, and so on. Trunca-
tion of the basis to first K columns requires also truncation
of the amplitude matrix to first K rows. The truncated basis
and amplitude matrix will be denoted as  ¯ and Ā, respec-
tively. Using this notation, the approximated matrix U can
be written as
¯ Ā
U≈ (87)
Truncation of the basis preserves the optimality of the
decomposition. The optimality lies in the fact that no other
79
rank K approximation can be closer to U in the Frobenius
norm or 2-norm [14]. This means that there is no better rank
K approximation to the matrix U than the POD approxima-
tion.
The quality of rank K approximation of matrix U de-
pends on the total energy of the retained modes. The error
of this approximation turns out to be equal to the K + 1 sin-
gular value [60]
M 
 
K 
  ¯ Ā
 Ei − Ei  =
 
i=1 i=1
It is convenient to introduce the fraction of energy carried
by the rank K truncated POD model. This can be defined as
the ratio of the energy retained in the approximated model
to the total energy. The energy here is taken as the sum of
squares of the singular values, so that the ratio is
K
σi2
erK = i=1
M
(89)
2
i=1 σi
In practice it is useful to define the fraction of the total
energy that should be neglected in the approximated POD
model. This is accomplished by finding the smallest K for
which the following inequality is satisfied
εK > 1 − erK (90)
where εK is the neglected, user defined, energy fraction.
In order to visualize how the truncation affects the ap-
proximated data set consider a 512 × 512 pixels gray scaled
picture of Nicolaus Copernicus. Each pixel of the image is
represented by a number ranging between 1 (white) and 0
(black). Columns of the pixels are treated as vectors, each
of them stored in matrix U. The image is shown in Fig. 19
(left). The SVD of U reveals the singular values shown in
Fig. 19 (right). As can be seen, the singular values decrease
rapidly which means that the data set is fairly well corre-
lated.
The subsequent truncated models of the data set are
shown in the subplots of Fig. 20.
The two subplots at the top show the representation of
the original image when the energy fraction retained in the
bases are erK = 99.99 % and erK = 99.9 %, respectively.
The number of retained vectors (modes) amounted K = 182
and K = 65. As can be seen, there is practically no visual
difference between the original image and the two truncated
models. This is quite surprising, since 64 % of modes in
the left image and 87 % in the right were removed from the
bases. The reason of that is obviously the rapid decrease of
the singular values. Since the modes carrying most of the
energy are still in the bases, the quality of the image is good.
Further truncation of the basis to K = 13 and K = 4 modes
80 A. Klimanek

Fig. 19 Original image (left)

and its corresponding singular
values (semi logarithmic scale)
(right)

Fig. 20 Truncated models of

the original image

is shown in the bottom subplots of Fig. 20. The energy re-
tained in the bases is still high with the energy fractions
erK = 99 % and erK = 95 %. As can be seen the quality of
the images is further degrading. The bottom left, nonethe-
less expressed by 13 modes only, can still be identified as
the original image. In the bottom right image, only the main
features are recognized.
This example shows that a data set can be accurately rep-
resented by surprisingly few component matrices. The num-
ber of modes that needs to be retained in the basis depends
on the correlation of the data. Well correlated data require
only a few modes with corresponding large singular values.
If the set under consideration is composed of experimen-
tal data with noise, truncation of the basis may also filter out
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 81

the noise if the singular values corresponding to the noise In order to take advantage of the reduced dimensionality
are small enough. features of the truncation, the above equations can be written
for the truncated basis and amplitude matrix
4.3 POD-RBF Network
¯ Ā(k)
U(k) ≈  (95)
The data set to be decomposed by POD can be stored in ma-
trix U virtually in an arbitrary order. The set reconstructed and for a single snapshot
by POD preserves the same pattern of the data. The field un- ¯ Āi (k)
Ui (k) ≈  (96)
der consideration is usually sampled at some discrete por-
tions of input data that can be stored in a vector. A single
There are many ways in which the dependence of the am-
snapshot can be reconstructed by the POD model exactly us-
plitude matrix Ā on the input data k can be incorporated.
ing the original (not truncated) basis and a single amplitude
One of the possibilities is to express every entry of the trun-
column
cated amplitude matrix Ā as a linear combination of known
interpolation functions gi (k)
Ui = Ai (91)

It can be approximated using the truncated basis and a single 

M
Āij (k) = Bij gi (k) (97)
column of the truncated amplitude matrix i=1

¯ Āi
Ui ≈  (92) where Bij are unknown entries of interpolation matrix B.
The set of interpolation functions gi (k) can be selected
The snapshots are generated for various input data k, and the
arbitrarily, however, selection of some functions, e.g. mono-
model can be used to reconstruct any snapshot Ui for any
mials, may lead to poorly or ill conditioned matrices. Ra-
input data k. However, only for these input data the results
dial Basis Functions (RBFs) [12] posses good approxima-
are available. In other words, it is impossible to reconstruct a
tion and smoothing properties, and are often used in mul-
snapshot for input data other than k, either inside or outside
tidimensional approximation. The arguments of RBFs are
the range of k. This delimits the model to data for which the
distances between RBF network nodes called centers ki and
basis has been created.
the current excitation vector k
In order to be able to reconstruct a snapshot for any input
data inside the range of variation of k, the so called POD- gi (k) = g(|k − ki |) (98)
RBF network can be created, where RBF stands for the Ra-
dial Basis Function. This approach is based on making the Requirement that Eq. (97) is exact for all generated snap-
POD model dependent on the input data for which it was shots yields a matrix equation
generated. In order to make the responses dependent on the
input data one can write Ā = BG (99)

U(k) = A(k) (93) where matrix G is composed of the subsequent interpolation

functions gi (k). Since both matrices Ā and G are known,
or matrix B can be evaluated by solving the system of equa-

M tions with many right hand sides using standard Gaussian
U(k) = i Ai (k) (94) solver
i=1
GT BT = ĀT (100)
where i is the ith column of matrix  and Ai is the ith row
of matrix A. If k is one of the vectors for which the snap- For some selections of the interpolation functions gi (k) en-
shot matrix U was generated, the equalities (93) and (94) tering the definition of matrix GT , Eq. (100) may become
hold. As can be seen the dependence is introduced in the nearly singular. In such situations application of Truncated
amplitude matrix A. The idea of making the amplitude ma- Singular Value Decomposition [5] instead of a Gaussian
trix dependent on the excitation vector has been first used solver is recommended.
in the context of inverse problems by Ostrowski [64]. The Once the entries of matrix B are determined, the final
last equation means that a snapshot for any excitation vec- formula relating a single snapshot Ui and the input vector k
tor k can be retrieved using the known basis , provided is
the dependence of the amplitude on the excitation vector is
known. ¯
Ui (k) ≈ BG i
(k) (101)
82
The snapshot matrix U is the set of responses of the real sys-
tem obtained for a discrete set of input vectors k. Approx-
imation (101) can be used to determine the response of the
system Ui for any input k. However, it is important to use
input vectors k inside the range for which the set of snap-
shots U was generated. Extrapolation outside the range may
lead to considerable errors.
The sources of errors involving application of Eq. (101)
are twofold; connected with truncation of the basis and with
the interpolation of matrix Ā. The former can be easily min-
imized by increasing the number of modes. The latter can
be decreased by increasing the number of generated snap-
shots. In general, more points produce more accurate results,
but excessive number of snapshots may lead to prohibitively
long calculation times and ill conditioned matrix G. The
method allows flexible addition of nodes in the vicinity of
steep gradients of the response. General rules regarding in-
terpolation should be applied to increase the accuracy of the
interpolation.
4.4 POD-RBF Network of Heat and Mass Transfer
in the Fill
In Sect. 2 the heat and mass transfer model of the fill, re-
ferred to as alternative approach, has been presented. The
model is based on solution of four ODEs with boundary
conditions prescribed at two sides of the domain. As already
mentioned, in the CFD model of the tower, the fill is treated
as a porous medium and divided into (finite volume) cells
gathered into vertical conduits. In the course of the simu-
lations of the transfer processes in the cooling tower, the
model of the heat and mass transfer in the fill exchange
data with the CFD model of the tower. The model of the
fill imports the following data from the CFD solver: inlet
mass flowrate and temperature of the air and water and the
humidity ratio of the air. These data are used as boundary
conditions in every vertical conduit where the heat and mass
transfer 1D model is solved. The conservation and kinet-
ics equations solved in each conduit produce distributions
of the primary variables of the ODE system (humidity ra-
tio X, temperature of the air Ta , temperature of the water
Tw and mass flow rate of the water mw ). The quantities ex-
ported to the CFD solver are the heat and mass (evaporated
water) volumetric sources along each conduit (cf. Fig. 9).
The values of the sources can readily be obtained from the
primary unknowns by setting mass and energy balances for
every finite volume cell in the conduit. New values of the
mass and heat sources used by the CFD solver produce cor-
rected values of velocities, temperatures and humidity ratio.
This in turn is used to generate a new set of boundary condi-
tions for the model of the fill. The procedure ends when the
prescribed accuracy is achieved.
From what is said above it follows that to use the POD-
RBF network to represent the heat and mass transfer in the
A. Klimanek
fill of the cooling tower, input of this system are the input
data of the set of ODEs
k = [Xi , Tai , Twi , mwi , ma ]T (102)
where the subscript i refers here to the inlet flow conditions
(top of the fill for water w and bottom of the fill for air a). As
can be seen the excitation vector k is composed of both, the
boundary conditions (Xi , Tai , Twi and mwi ) and parameters
(ma ) of the set of ODEs. The number and type of variables
entering vector k depends on the system and the user of the
POD-RBF network. The expected response of the system,
the j th snapshot Uj , is the collection of the sources of both,
heat and mass
Uj = [QV 1 , QV 2 , . . . , QV n , mV 1 , mV 2 , . . . , mV n ]T (103)
where QV k and mV k denote volumetric heat and mass
sources at the kth finite volume of the conduit. The dimen-
sion of the snapshot is N = 2n with the first n positions
occupied by heat and the next n position by mass sources.
Among a large selection of the available RBFs, the
most frequently applied are the multiquadric, inverse mul-
tiquadric, Gaussian, polyharmonic spline and thin plate
spline. Regularization is often used in the RBFs to con-
trol the oscillation of the functions. The thin plate spline
possesses additional properties that make it favorable when
compared to other RBFs. The properties are:
– the function can have but does not need free regulariza-
tion parameters that require manual adjustment
– the derivatives to any order of the interpolation are
smooth
– there is a physical background of the minimized bending
energy of the thin plate spline
It should be however stressed, that selection of this function
does not guarantee a better interpolation of the data. Tests
performed by the author of this paper shown that the thin
plate spline produced better results when compared to mul-
tiquadrics and inverse multiquadrics in this case. Therefore,
this radially based function has been selected to be used in
this study. The thin plate spline is defined as
   2  
gi (k) = g |k − ki | = |k − ki | ln |k − ki | (104)
where | · | stands for Euclidean norm.
4.5 Numerical Example
A set of M = 1500 snapshots of the length N = 20 (10 heat
sources and 10 mass sources) was generated by solution of
the set of ODEs describing heat and mass transfer in cooling
towers. The solution was obtained for the product βaf Az
computed iteratively from the Merkel number according to
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 83

Fig. 21 ODE system response field. Heat (upper map) and mass Fig. 22 The rapidly decreasing singular values of U (semi logy scale)
(lower map) sources

the Poppe theory as described in Sect. 2.3.3. The Merkel

number used was the experimentally determined expression
by Kloppers [43] for an expanded metal film fill of height
H = 1.2 m given by Eq. 74. Both cases of the unsaturated
air given by Eqs. (19), (55), (57) and (58), as well as su-
persaturated air given by Eqs. (61), (62), (63) and (64) are
considered. The sets are solved by means of the alternative
method described in Sect. 2.3.3. The snapshots were gener-
ated for all the combinations of the input data k, sampled at
various levels as presented below:

Xi = {2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, 4.0}, g/kg

Tai = {19.0, 19.5, 20.0, 20.521.0}, °C
Twi = {37.0, 39.0, 41.0}, °C (105)
Fig. 23 The relative errors re of heat and mass sources due to trunca-
mwi = {2.6, 2.9, 3.2, 3.5, 3.8}, kg/s
tion of the basis
ma = {2.3, 2.6, 2.9, 3.2}, kg/s

In general the ranges of the input data should be chosen such
that the expected occurrence of each variable lie inside the
range. Here, for presentation purpose, only a small portion
of the expected variation of the input data has been chosen.
The response field generated for input data (105) has been
presented in Fig. 21 as a map of values in each node. For bet-
ter readability the heat and mass sources have been shown
separately. The neglected energy removed from the POD ba-
sis  was selected to be εK = 0.96 × 10−8 , which resulted
in a truncation of the basis to the first K = 13 POD vec-
tors. In Fig. 22 the decrease of the singular values σi of the
snapshot matrix are shown. As can be seen, the singular val-
ues are decreasing rapidly indicating good correlation of the
data. Truncation of the basis to the first K vectors is anno-
tated.
The created POD model has been used to reconstruct the
snapshots for the input data (105) using Eq. (101). As a
measure of goodness of the approximation, three parame-
ters were calculated: the residuals eij , which are the differ-
ences between each element i, j in the original and the re-
constructed snapshot matrices, the relative error reij defined
as the residual eij divided by the original value of each ele-
ment of the snapshot matrix. The last parameter is the root
mean squared error RMSE of all elements of snapshot matrix


 1  N  M

RMSE =  2
eij (106)
NM
i=1 j =1
All the parameters were calculated separately for heat and
mass sources. The results of this comparison are presented
in Fig. 23 as an image of the relative errors. Since the in-
terpolation exactly recovers the data in the nodes for which
the interpolation was generated, the relative errors shown in
84
Fig. 23 are virtually the errors due to truncation of the ba-
sis. As can be seen, despite the 7 modes of the basis were
neglected, the relative errors for heat and mass sources were
very small. In case of heat sources the maximum errors are
of the order 10−3 . For mass sources it amounted order 10−4
The calculated root mean squared errors are RMSE = 0.4 for
heat sources and RMSE = 2.6 × 10−6 for mass sources.
The same POD model has been used to reconstruct sys-
tem responses for excitations k not used when generating
the snapshot matrix. The selected additional data points are
Xi = {2.25, 2.75, 3.25, 3.75}, g/kg
Tai = {19.25, 19.75, 20.25, 20.75}, °C
Twi = {38.0, 40.0}, °C (107)
mwi = {2.75, 3.05, 3.35, 3.65}, kg/s
ma = {2.4, 2.5, 2.7, 2.8, 3.0, 3.1}, kg/s
whose combinations give the total number M = 768 snap-
shots, each of the length N = 20. In order to compare
the snapshots reconstructed using Eq. (101) with responses
from the real system, the snapshots not entering the POD
basis were created by solving the sets of ODEs. As can be
seen, the data (107) are contained inside the range for which
the POD model had been created. The results of the ODEs
solution were compared with the results generated by the
POD-RBF network produced for the previous data set. Fig-
ure 24 shows the relative errors re for the new input data
points. As one could expect, the accuracy of the approx-
imation is worse than that obtained for input data (105).
In average the relative errors re are much less than 1 %.
The maximum relative error re is of the order of 10−1 for
heat sources and 10−2 for mass sources. The calculated root
mean squared errors are: RMSE = 118.8 for heat sources
and RMSE = 7.5 × 10−5 for mass sources.
Fig. 24 The relative errors re of heat and mass sources for new data
points
A. Klimanek
4.6 General Remarks Concerning the Application
of the POD-RBF Model
The presented reduced order model is a good representa-
tion of the heat and mass transfer processes in the fill of the
cooling tower. Application of the POD-RBF network leads
to significant reduction of execution time. At average, POD
model produces results two orders of magnitude faster than
its standard counterpart. Such acceleration comes from the
fact that, instead of solving iteratively the system of ordinary
differential equations in each vertical conduit only Eq. (101)
needs to be evaluated. The latter is equivalent to an evalua-
tion of a matrix vector product. An accurate execution time
economy is difficult to asses, since the differential equations
are solved iteratively with adaptive step-size control tech-
nique. As a result the computational time for each run varies
depending on the input data. It should be stressed that the
time of constructing the POD model can be long and re-
quires some experience. The advantage of the application
of POD-RBF network is that the model is produced once
and can be reused many times producing a fast and accu-
rate response. If very high accuracy is required, the POD-
RBF model can be used at the beginning of the iterative pro-
cess. To avoid the approximation error inherent in the POD
model, in the final phase of iterations the accurate model
may be used. Selection of different interpolation functions
gi (k) is possible and requires additional research. Depend-
ing on the data to be interpolated, other RBFs like muti-
quadrics or reciprocal multiquadrics may produce better re-
sults. The POD method of approximation is general and can
be applied to any system producing response field (vector)
when excited by an input vector. The technique is also appli-
cable for noisy data, as then the high frequency errors can be
filtered out. The POD-RBF network of heat and mass trans-
fer in the fill has been presented in [41, 42].
5 Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Using CFD Tools
5.1 Current Status of the Research
The Merkel type methods belong to the so called global
methods [72] that treat the cooling tower as a black box.
This allows determination of the design parameters basing
on the flow conditions averaged across the tower. This ap-
proach is not only a source of inaccuracy but also does not
allow to take into account the phenomena related to the non-
uniformities in the flow of water and air, and fill depth in the
tower.
The deficiencies of the Merkel type methods related to
the simplified air flow representation have been surmounted
in the eighties, when development of computers and compu-
tational methods allowed numerical solution of the coupled
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
partial differential equations. The averaged flow parameters
now could be represented by two or three dimensional flow
and could be coupled with the governing equations of heat
and mass transfer. The number of developed models incor-
porating CFD is large. The most important models will now
be presented.
Majumdar et al. [56] developed a two-dimensional finite
difference code VERA2D-84 taking into account the interior
of the cooling tower. In his model, the inlet profiles of air
temperature, moisture content, velocity as well as the mass
flow rate were treated as known. At the tower outlet, the at-
mosphere pressure was prescribed. The model was capable
of predicting the air velocity, temperature, pressure and hu-
midity by solving mass and momentum conservation equa-
tions. The heat and mass transfer rates were described by
Merkel approximation or were represented by two constants.
Possible condensation of the water vapor was not taken into
account. The model has been further developed [57] where
treatment of the boundary conditions at the outlet have been
adjusted to account for the sub-atmospheric pressure and re-
circulation that occur there.
Benton and Waldrop [7] introduced a quasi two-dimen-
sional model. The tower was divided into regions where con-
servation equations are solved, with the condition, that the
variables must match at region boundaries. The model was
capable of taking into account the heat, mass and momen-
tum transfer throughout the tower. It could address several
configurations, fill arrangements and flow distributions most
frequently used in power industry. The boundary condition
at the tower exit was assumed to be the atmospheric pres-
sure. The flow of air was determined by the use of Bernoulli
equation. The model has been successfully validated against
experimental data obtained for three large cooling towers.
Radosavljevic [72] in his original work presented one-
dimensional, two-dimensional axisymmetric and three-di-
mensional models of natural draft wet-cooling tower. The
author used PHOENICS [77] CFD code to solve the trans-
port equations of mass (moist air and water), momentum,
moisture content of water vapor, and enthalpy (moist air and
water). The turbulence was treated as isotropic with an al-
gebraic expression for the effective viscosity. The equations
governing the evaporative cooling (heat and mass transfer)
as well as the momentum transfer in cooling tower zones
were coupled with the equations solved in the PHOENICS
code via source terms. The models of heat and mass transfer
treated the spray, fill and rain zones in a manner based on
the performance characteristics typical for the Merkel type
methods. The author used a step by step approach first de-
veloping one-dimensional code and comparing it with suit-
able experimental data. Then the 2D axisymmetric model
was created encompassing both the tower and the surround-
ing air. The model comprised more than 300 m high cylinder
of a 200 m base radius. This allowed prescribing boundary
85
conditions far away from the tower and avoided guessing the
tower inlet and outlet profiles. Determination of flow fields,
both inside and outside the tower also became possible. This
model have been successfully validated against experimen-
tal data for two different towers. Then the author used the
model to perform a set of parametric studies changing both
the fill shape and water flow rate distribution. It was found
that introducing linear and exponential water load distribu-
tions deteriorated the performance in all analyzed cases. Re-
moving a small amount of fill volume from the center of the
tower, maintaining uniform water flow and the same volume
of the fill, decreased the cooled water temperature. However,
the observed improvement was very small (0.03 K). The 2D
model have also been applied to determine the influence of
tower shape on the unfavorable inflow of cold air from the
top of the tower. The results agreed qualitatively with the
behavior described in the literature. The author performed
a grid sensitivity test comparing the cooled water temper-
atures for various mesh sizes. The model was claimed to
be grid independent in spite of this, that only 1092 control
volumes were used to discretize the entire domain and only
one parameter was compared. The two-dimensional model
has been then extended to 3D to account for the wind effect
on cooling tower performance. A series of computational
cases have been carried out to determine the influence of
placing wind barriers under and near the inlet of the tower.
Results showed some possible improvement for a barrier
placed close to the inlet. The great advantage of Radosavl-
jevic model was that it opened a possibility of carrying out
several parameter studies that have not been accessible be-
fore.
Hawlader and Liu [22] developed a 2D axisymmetric
model of a evaporative cooling tower. They solved the gov-
erning equations of flow, moisture content transport, and en-
ergy by means of the finite difference method. The authors
applied an algebraic expression to determine the effective
viscosity for the turbulent flow. The flow of water film in the
fill zone was treated as continuous phase, while the droplets
in the rain zone are described by one dimensional motion in
the Lagrangian form. The effect of deformation of droplets
was taken into account. The interaction between phases was
solved by means of source terms in the governing equations.
The heat and mass transfer in the fill zone was treated in the
Merkel type manner with experimentally determined trans-
fer coefficients. A dimensionless correlation by Erens [15]
has been used in the rain zone. No information was given on
modelling of the spray region. The computational domain
contained the cooling tower only. The unknown boundary
conditions at the inlet and outlet of the tower were deter-
mined from the improved thermal-hydraulic point model
based on mass, energy and hydraulic balance. This model
was capable of adjusting the boundary conditions during the
simulation satisfying global balances. The computational
86
grid was built out of 3825 non-uniformly distributed control
cells and the solution was claimed to be grid independent.
Validation of the model against field test data have been pre-
sented.
Al-Waked and Behnia [2] presented a three-dimensional
CFD model of a cooling tower developed using the Fluent
code. The model was built to study the influence of cross-
wind on tower thermal performance and possibilities of re-
ducing this unfavorable effect. The flow of air have been
modelled in the Eulerian form whilst the water phase in
the Lagrangian approach. Thus, the water in the spray, fill
and rain zones are represented by droplets. Since in the fill
the water flows as a thin film, the difference in the rep-
resentation by droplets have been compensated by adjust-
ing the velocity of the droplets to obtain the same effec-
tive heat and mass transfer as for the film. The standard
k– was used to model the turbulence. A cylindrical com-
putational domain have been created of height and radius
500 m. The model have been validated against design pa-
rameters of the studied tower and the results of compari-
son were claimed to be satisfactory. The model have then
been used to study the effects of inlet water temperature
and mass flow rate, droplet diameter as well as the number
of spray nozzles and tracked droplets. In the end the cross-
wind effect have been studied. The computational mesh con-
sisted of 600 thousand structured and unstructured cells. No
information is provided whether the solution was grid in-
dependent. The same model have been applied in another
study of the authors [3]. The effect of wind brake walls
at the tower inlet and both, permeable and impermeable,
walls in the rain zone under cross-wind have been investi-
gated. The authors concluded that installing the walls en-
hances the tower performance under cross-wind. However,
the improvement depends on the location and porosity of the
walls. The highest performance was obtained for the outside
walls of porosity 53 % and for the rain zone walls of porosity
70 %.
Williamson and Behnia [90, 91] have developed a 2D ax-
isymmetric CFD model of a natural draft wet cooling tower
using Fluent. The model was developed to accurately pre-
dict the phenomena in the tower and to perform the opti-
mization of fill height and water flow distributions. The flow
of droplets in the spray and rain zones were represented in
the Lagrangian form. The heat and mass transfer between air
and water droplets was determined from experimental cor-
relations of Ranz and Marshal [73, 74]. The heat and mass
transfer in the fill was represented in the Poppe form trans-
port coefficients. The standard k– was used to model the
turbulence. The simulations showed radial non-uniformities
in flow parameters indicating possibility in optimizing the
fill depth and water distribution. The authors compared the
2D axisymmetric with a one-dimensional model [92] obtain-
ing similar results in both cases. An original approach to the
A. Klimanek
fill shape and water load distribution profiles has been pre-
sented recently by the authors [93]. Since the determination
of the objective function requires usually time consuming
CFD simulation, the optimization of tower parameters using
CFD code is cumbersome. The authors applied an extended
1D-zonal model to capture the flow non-uniformities across
the tower. The fill was divided across the tower radius into
four zones, where the Merkel method was applied to repre-
sent the heat and mass transfer. Each of the fill zones was
treated separately and could have individual fill height and
water flow rate. An evolutionary algorithm was then used
to find an optimal fill height and water flow rate distribu-
tions. The obtained results were compared with the 2D ax-
isymmetric CFD model with applied the same fill and wa-
ter flow configurations. Nonetheless the obtained profiles
differed considerably from the uniform ones, the potential
improvement in cooled water temperature was shown to be
negligible (0.04 K).
Reuter and Kröger[75] presented a 2D axisymmetric
model of a cooling tower packed with splash or trickle fills.
The model has been developed using the Fluent code sup-
plemented with user defined functions (UDF) for calcula-
tions of heat, mass and momentum transfer in the critical
zones of cooling tower as well as for boundary conditions
specification. The heat and mass transfer is solved using the
Merkel method. The particles are tracked in a Lagrangian
frame of reference in the rain zone and k– model was used
for turbulence modelling. Since the splash and trickle fills
allow the mutual air/water flow to be oblique, in opposite to
purely counterflow or crossflow, this model can handle the
anisotropic properties of these type of fills. The model has
been tested and compared with a 1D model based on Merkel
method showing good agreement between the 2D and 1D
model results.
5.2 Models of Heat and Mass Transfer in the Rain
and Spray Zones
In wet-cooling towers equipped with film fills, the water
leaving the fill flows through the so called rain zone as
droplets. The droplets are collected in the water basin sit-
uated under the tower.
The droplets being in contact with air entering the rain
zone are cooled due to convection, evaporation of water and
radiation. Because of relatively low temperature difference
in the system, the radiative heat transfer is neglected in this
study. Assuming there is no influence of one heat transfer
mode on the other, the heat transferred from water to the air
can be written as
Q = Qe + Qc (108)
where Qc is the convection heat transfer rate and Qe is
the heat due to evaporation. The heat and mass transfer
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
can be intensified by reduction of the droplet’s diameters,
which increases the air/water contact area and droplets resi-
dence times in the rain zone. According to Hollands [25],
the droplet sizes should be as small as 1–2 mm. This is
however difficult to achieve even for splash fills, where the
droplet’s diameters are between 3 and 4 mm [51]. As shown
by Terblanche et al. [83], placing a slat grid at some dis-
tance below the fill can produce droplet diameters as small
as ∼2.8 mm.
As will be explained later, the rain zone is solved in the
CFD model as a multiphase with the Euler-Euler multiphase
model [20]. In this model, both phases are transported as
phase volume fractions in a finite volume, so the droplets di-
ameters are not tracked. However, the interactions between
the phases are based on the representative diameter of the
liquid phase. Therefore, the droplets in the rain zone will be
treated as having the Sauter mean diameter d32 [4, 51].
The applied Euler-Euler multiphase model has an option
of working with a distribution of droplet diameters. In this
case however, each diameter fraction should be treated as an
independent phase or one of the methods of moments may
be applied (QMOM or DQMOM) [20]. Another possibility
is to apply Lagrangian tracking of particles to take into ac-
count the flow in the rain and spray zones. Other authors
who developed CFD models of cooling towers used this ap-
proach [3, 75, 91, 92]. In the Lagrangian approach particles
are tracked individually or in groups called parcels, where
the particle size distribution can be naturally incorporated.
Every phase requires a solution of additional four (2D
model) or five (3D model) transport equations. For large
problems arising when simulating cooling towers, this
would lead to prohibitively long computational times. Ad-
ditionally, the data concerning the diameters of the droplets
are uncertain, thus only one phase of representative diameter
has been considered.
The interactions between the phases are introduced as
sources to the governing equations of each phase. If heat or
mass is transferred from one phase to the other, the quantity
is a sink for one phase and source for the other.
5.2.1 Droplet Size Distributions
There is a wide distribution of droplet sizes in a real rain
zone. The distributions vary for different fill types. It was
shown by Terblanche et al. [83], that there is very little in-
fluence of the air and water mass flow rates on the size distri-
butions. If a distribution of droplet sizes is known, the Sauter
mean diameter d32 can be calculated according to [4, 51] as
n
ni di3
d32 = i=1n (109)
i=1 ni di
2 Sc =
where ni is the number of droplets of diameter di and n is
the number of sizes in a discrete distribution. According to
87
Kröger [51] and Terblanche et al. [83], the Sauter mean di-
ameter beneath film fills generally falls between 5 and 6 mm.
5.2.2 Heat and Mass Transfer in the Rain Zone
The convection heat transfer between the phases can be cal-
culated internally in the CFD code when the Eulerian type
multiphase model is activated [20]. The Nusselt number, by
default, is determined from correlation of Ranz and Mar-
shal [73, 74]
Nu = 2.0 + 0.6Re1/2 Pr1/3 (110)
where Pr is the Prandtl number and Re is the Reynolds num-
ber based on droplet diameter and relative air/water droplet
velocity. The droplets are treated as perfect spheres and the
resultant heat transfer coefficient is an average coefficient
for one droplet. Another correlation that has proven suc-
cessful and could be used instead of relationship (110) is
by Whitaker [9, 88] or Erens [15, 22].
The heat and mass transfer due to evaporation of wa-
ter is determined by an external procedure programmed by
the author using the User Defined Function (UDF) mecha-
nism [20]. In order to determine the heat transferred due to
evaporation, the mass of evaporated water must be known.
The procedure of determining the heat and mass transfer due
to evaporation will be described below.
Consider a droplet of water suspended in flowing air. The
convection mass transfer between the water droplet and air
can be calculated using
πd 2  w 
me = β Xs − X (111)
4
where d is the droplet diameter, β is the average mass trans-
fer coefficient, X is the humidity ratio of the bulk air and
Xsw is the humidity ratio of air saturated with water vapor at
the air-water droplet interface. This humidity ratio is eval-
uated at droplet temperature Tw . The mass transfer coeffi-
cient is determined applying the analogy between heat and
mass transfer. Thus, the Ranz-Marshal formula (110) can be
used replacing subsequent dimensionless numbers; Nusselt
by Sherwood and Prandtl by Schmidt to obtain
Sh = 2.0 + 0.6Re1/2 Sc1/3 (112)
where Sh and Sc are the Sherwood and Schmidt numbers,
respectively. These dimensionless numbers are defined as
βD d
Sh = (113)
D
ν
(114)
D
where D is the mass diffusivity and ν is the kinematic vis-
cosity. The quantity βD , m/s, is a mass transfer coefficient
88
that occurs in mass transfer equation, similar to Eq. (111), if
the driving potential is the concentration expressed in kg of
constituents per m3 of mixture. According to Kröger [51],
the relationship linking the two mass transfer coefficients is
 
βD p Xsw X Gw
β= − (115)
Rv T (Xsw − X) (Xsw + 0.622) (X + 0.622)
where, Rv is the vapor gas constant and p is the static pres-
sure of the mixture. As can be seen from the above equa-
tions, when the Sherwood number is known, the mass trans-
fer coefficient appearing in Eq. (111) can be determined.
The heat transferred from the evaporating water droplet to
the air can be written as
Qe = me he (116)
where he is the enthalpy of evaporating water
he = r0 + cpv
w
Tw (117)
5.2.3 Heat and Mass Transfer in the Spray Zone
The heat transferred in the spray zone comprises usually less
than 10 % of the total heat transfer in the tower and is in
rough calculations often omitted.
The thermodynamic analysis of a wet-cooling tower by
either Merkel or Poppe methods is usually performed by de-
scribing all three regions; the rain, fill and spray zones as
one, with a representative Merkel number. The Merkel num-
ber is the sum of the subsequent Merkel numbers of each
zone [43, 51]
Me = Merz + Mef i + Mesz (118)
where the indices rz, f i and sz refer to the rain zone, fill
and spray zone, respectively. The analysis can be then per-
formed according to Poppe or Merkel methods as described
in Sect. 2.3 with appropriately modified boundary condi-
tions, to take into account all three regions. Refer to [43,
51] for more information and examples of such analyzes.
In this study the rain zone is modelled using the Euler
multiphase model built in the CFD code, therefore the rep-
resentative Merkel number is
Me = Mef i + Mesz (119)
The thermodynamic analysis of the spray zone is incorpo-
rated into the fill analysis. Therefore, referring to the heat
and mass transfer in the fill should be hereafter understood
as the analysis of both, the fill and spray zone.
A. Klimanek
Merkel Number in the Spray Zone The Merkel number
empirical correlation for the spray zone was given by Lowe
and Christie [55]
 0.5
Ga
Mesz = 0.2Hsz (120)
where Hsz is the height of the spray zone. Relationship (120)
has been obtained on a small scale experimental facility.
Similar relationship has been obtained by Rish [13] from
experimental data obtained from a full scale cooling tower.
According to Stechman [82] the correlation is
 0.5
Ga
Mesz = 0.204Hsz (121)
Gw
As can be seen, the two relationships given above are prac-
tically the same.
5.3 Momentum Transfer in the Fill, Rain and Spray Zones
The flowing air being in contact with water in the fill, rain
and spray zones is moisturized and warmed up. This reduces
its density and forms the draft in the tower. The draft is there-
fore the main reason and the effect of the heat and mass
transfer in the wet-cooling tower. The air flowing through
the tower is subjected to obstacles such as construction pil-
lars, droplets in the rain zone, the fill, the water spray sys-
tem, the drift eliminators and walls of the tower shell. The
obstacles give rise to the pressure drop in the flowing air and
reduce the draft. For steady conditions, both the draft and the
pressure drop due to flow of air equilibrate.
In cooling tower calculations, where the low dimensional
global models are used, the pressure drop is predicted by
means of draft equation. Prediction of pressure drop needs
to be done for each flow obstacle giving rise to flow resis-
tance (refer to [51] or [50] for more information). Calcula-
tions of pressure drop occurring on elements of the cooling
tower that are present in the CFD model is not required. If
the boundary conditions on walls are appropriately assigned
and the boundary layers correctly resolved, the stresses on
these flow obstructions are determined by the CFD code.
This applies also to losses due to rapid contractions and ex-
pansions as well as inlets and exits.
The obstacles whose geometry is not present in the CFD
model require additional modelling of the pressure drop
(momentum loss) occurring on these objects. The pressure
drop is introduced in the CFD model as sources to the
momentum equations. The sources S, usually expressed in
N/m3 , are calculated as the pressure drop Δp occurring on
an object of length L divided by this length
Δp
S=− (122)
L
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
A general expression relating the source S and fluid velocity
u can be written as [20]
 
μ 1
S=− u + C ρu2 (123)
ς 2
where μ is the dynamic viscosity, ς is the permeability, C is
the inertial resistance factor and ρ is the density of the fluid.
The first term on the right hand side of Eq. (123) is called
the viscous loss term, also known as Darcy’s term and the
quantity 1/ς is often referred to as viscous resistance factor.
The second term of Eq. (123) is called the inertial loss term
[20]. As can be seen, the source term is a quadratic function
of velocity. At low velocities, the pressure drop may exhibit
linear dependence on velocity and Eq. (123) may be reduced
to the Darcy’s term only. For high velocities, only the inertial
term may be applied. For the objects and flow conditions oc-
curring in wet cooling towers, in most cases only the inertial
loss term is used.
Equation (123) is the basic expression used for momen-
tum transfer in the porous media model available in the CFD
code Fluent. The pressure drop on the fill, spray zone and
drift eliminator is modelled using Eq. (123). More details
on application of the porous media model will be presented
in Sect. 5.5.3.
In the literature [43, 50, 51, 82] it is common to apply a
dimensionless loss coefficient ζ so that the inertial loss term
and the corresponding pressure drop can be written as
1 Gw
Δp = ζ ρu2 (124)
2 Ga
The relationship linking the inertial resistance factor C and
the loss coefficient ζ is
ζ = CL (125)
The equation above can be applied if the only term taken
into account is the inertial loss term. In order to calculate the
momentum source S, in situation where the loss coefficient
ζ is known, a representative length L of the object under
consideration have to be determined.
Depending on the object under consideration, the quanti-
ties C and ζ may exhibit various functional dependencies.
5.3.1 Inertial Resistance Factors and Loss Coefficients
in the Cooling Tower
Sample relationships frequently used in cooling tower lit-
erature for various construction elements of the cooling
tower and its equipment are presented below. Correlations
are given to describe the fill, spray zone, drift eliminators,
tower support pillars and bear-loading elements installed in-
side the cooling tower. Most of the correlations given below
have been adopted from Stechman [50, 82], Kröger [51] and
89
Kloppers [45], where extensive information and analysis of
pressure drop calculations in cooling towers are presented.
The relationships given below assume taking into account
the inertial loss term only.
Inertial Resistance Factors in the Fill There is variety of
inertial resistance factors correlations of fills reported in the
literature. The correlation for a fill of height H given by
Stechman [82] is
1
C= a1 (ζ0 + a2 Gw ) (126)
H
where a1 and ζ0 are dimensionless constants, Gw = mw /Az
is water mass flux density, a2 is a general function of the
form
 
a4
a2 = f a 3 , √ (127)
γ dh g
where dh = 4γ /af is a hydraulic diameter of fill channels
proposed by Hobler [23], γ is the porosity of the fill and g
is the gravitational acceleration. The quantities a1 , a3 and a4
are determined experimentally for a given fill type and ζ0 is
the loss coefficient of the fill due to air flow only. Accord-
ing to Stechman [82], in many correlations a1 is equal to 1,
thus, for a given fill of height H , correlation (126) becomes
a linear function of the water mass flux density Gw .
Kröger [51] presented correlations in the following forms
C = a1 + a2 (128)
or
C = aGb1 b2
w Ga (129)
where a, a1 , a2 , b1 and b2 are determined experimentally in
each case.
The most frequently used relationships in wet-cooling
tower fills have been summarized by Kloppers [45]. Bas-
ing on Ergun’s equation [16] for the pressure drop through
packed beds, he concluded, that the pressure drop correla-
tion should be a sum of two terms, where each term is a
function of air and water mass flux densities. The proposed
equation is
w Ga + a2 Gw Ga
C = a1 Gb1 b2 b3 b4
(130)
Applying relationship (130) can be viewed as taking into ac-
count both, the viscous and inertial loss terms in Eq. (123).
It was shown by Kloppers [45], that Eq. (130) correlates the
empirical data of all fill types accurately and the correla-
tion is better than that obtained from Eq. (129). The form
of Eq. (130) is more general and produces more accurate
results when extrapolating outside the range of the experi-
mental data set.
90
Although the correlations are complex, the accuracy lies
in the experiments, which for wet-cooling tower fills are
known to be difficult to conduct.
The air traveling through the fill is warmed up and mois-
turized, therefore its velocity and density changes along the
fill height. The velocity and density appearing in Eqs. (123)
and (124) is often taken as the average of fill inlet and out-
let conditions. This however is not a rule, and some authors
use the inlet air velocity and density. In order to avoid er-
rors, the same parameters should be used as those for which
experimental correlation have been determined.
Inertial Resistance Factors in the Drift Eliminator As re-
ported by Stechman [82], the inertial resistance factor in
most commonly used drift eliminators are constant and fall
between 2–4. Kröger [51] presented a more complex rela-
tionship for the factor being a function of the characteristic
flow parameter Ry. The relationship is
1
C= aRy b (131)
H experience is required to select these quantities properly.
where H is the drift’s eliminator height and a and b are to be
determined experimentally. The characteristic flow parame-
ter is defined as
ρu
Ry = (132)
μ plied. The momentum transfer between the spherical wa-
Inertial Resistance Factors in the Spray Zone Rish [76]
studied the losses in both, the rain and spray zones. A corre-
lation given by [76] that can be applied to both zones is
 −1.32
Ga
C = 0.52 (133)
Gw
The analysis have to be, however, applied to these two zones
separately [82]. Since the rain zone is modelled using the
Euler multiphase model, the given above relationship is ap-
plied to the spray zone only.
Loss Coefficient of Tower Support Pillars The relationship
of loss coefficient of tower support pillars is based on the
drag coefficient CD
ζ = CD (1 − f ) (134)
where 1 − f is the fraction of flow area occupied by the
tower support pillars
CD = 1.2 for round pillars,
CD = 2.0 for square pillars.
A. Klimanek
Loss Coefficient of Load-Bearing Elements Installed Inside
the Tower, Like Beams, Ducts, etc. In this case, the iner-
tial resistance factor is estimated approximately. According
to Stechman [82] the dimensionless loss coefficient ζ falls
between 2–6.
As can be seen, in many of the correlations given above,
experimental tests have to be performed to determine the
constants appearing in the relationships. These quantities are
usually supplied by the manufacturers. The pressure drop
through the fill has the largest impact on the overall pres-
sure drop in the tower, therefore the accuracy of the corre-
lations is of importance. Problems occur when analyzing a
cooling tower under operation. As time passes, fouling may
occur on the fill and the original correlations determined
for new fill are not valid anymore. In such cases fill per-
formance tests have to be repeated. It should be stressed,
that obtaining reliable correlations for the fill is difficult and
require large scale test rigs in order to avoid boundary ef-
fects.
As can be seen from the correlations given above, some
of the coefficients are estimates, thus care must be taken and
5.3.2 Momentum Transfer in the Rain Zone
As mentioned before, the rain zone is treated as multi-
phase region where the Euler-Euler multiphase model is ap-
ter droplets and the air is modelled internally in the mul-
tiphase model. As for the convection heat transfer, there
are built in correlations to take into account the momen-
tum transfer. The momentum transferred from phase p to
phase q is calculated using the so called interphase momen-
tum exchange coefficient Kpq being a function of drag co-
efficient CD
Kpq = f (CD ) (135)
where Kpq = Kqp . Refer to Fluent manual [20] and Sect. 5.4
for more information on the momentum exchange in the
Fluent’s Euler multiphase model. The available approaches
differ in the selection of drag coefficient functions. Relation-
ship selected in this study is by Schiller and Naumann [79]
and is given by

24(1 + 0.15Re0.687 )/Re for Re ≤ 1000
CD = (136)
0.44 for Re > 1000
The Reynolds number Re in the above equation is based
on the droplet diameter and relative air/water droplet ve-
locities. If more rigorous approach is required, a model by
Morsi and Alexander [61] is also available. This model is
the most complete, however, calculations may be less stable
than with the Schiller and Naumann relationship.
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 91

5.4 Governing Equations Solved in the CFD Code noted for phases q by αq . The volume fraction represents
the volume occupied by a single phase and the conservation
As mentioned earlier the ANSYS Fluent CFD code has been of mass, momentum, energy is satisfied for each phase in-
used for the simulations. The equations under consideration dividually. The volume fractions of all phases present in the
are the conservation equations of mass, momentum, energy, system must sum up to one
chemical species and phase volume fractions. The turbu-
lence model used, requires solving two additional transport 
n
αq = 1 (137)
equations. The presence of water droplets in the moist air
q=1
is accounted for by invoking the multiphase Euler-Euler ap-
proach. Actually, only in the rain zone the model needs to where n is the number of phases. The effective density of a
be used, as in the remaining portion of the cooling tower, single phase is defined as
single phase flow is assumed. Thus, the equations of the
multiphase model are to be solved throughout the entire do- ρ̂q = αq ρq (138)
main.
In the multiphase model two phases are distinguished. where ρq is the physical density of phase q.
The primary phase is the air with the water vapor. The sec- As mentioned above, conservation equations for multi-
ondary phase are the water droplets in the rain zone. Such phase flow are solved in the entire domain, yet the volume
a formulation requires a solution of two distinct continuity fraction of liquid water is zero outside the rain zone.
equations, one for each phase. Within the primary phase,
three chemical species (oxygen, nitrogen and water vapor) Continuity Equation for Primary Phase The equation for
are distinguished, so that two additional species transport conservation of mass, or continuity equation for the primary
equations, for oxygen and water vapor are solved. As the phase q is
momentum is a vectorial quantity, the conservation of this
property requires a solution of two (2D) or three (3D) mo- ∂ n

mentum conservation for each phase. The set of conserva- ρq + ∇ · (ρq uq ) = (mpq − mqp ) + Sq (139)
∂t
tion equations is augmented by two energy equations, one p=1

for each phase. The dispersed RNG k– model is selected

where uq is the velocity vector of phase q, mpq is the mass
to describe the turbulence, therefore two transport equations
transferred from phase p to phase q and mqp from phase q
for k and  are solved. The summary of the solved equations
to p. The quantity Sq is the mass source term of phase q.
is presented in Table 3.
The mechanisms of interphase mass transfer as well as the
The flow of air is assumed to be well described by the
sources can be specified by the user.
incompressible ideal gas model. The properties of fluids are
given functions of state variables.
Species Transport Equation The primary phase (the moist
The equations presented below are defined for Carte-
air) is composed of three species; the nitrogen, oxygen and
sian coordinate system. For the 2D axisymmetric model,
they should be modified to account for the radial and ax- water vapor. Transport of these species and computation of
ial coordinates. These modified equations are not presented their mass fractions Yi is included in the model. The species
here. transport equations are solved for oxygen and water vapor
The description of multiphase flow as interpenetrating only. The remaining mass fraction of nitrogen is calculated
continua incorporates the concept of volume fractions de- from the constraint that the mass fractions of all species must
sum up to unity
Table 3 Governing equations solved in the CFD code 
m
Yi = 1 (140)
Equation # Of eqs Applied to
i=1
2D 3D
where m is the number of chemical species. In order to
Continuity 2 2 Both phases minimize numerical error, the species to be calculated from
(moist air, liquid water)
Eq. (140) should be that, whose overall mass fraction is
Species 2 2 Primary phase
transport (oxygen, water vapor) large. In this study the species is nitrogen.
Momentum 4 6 Both phases The species convection-diffusion equation can be written
Energy 2 2 Both phases
in the following form
Turbulence 2 2 Primary phase ∂
(moist air) (ρq Yi ) + ∇ · (ρq Yi u) = −∇ · Ji + Si (141)
∂t
92 A. Klimanek

where ρq is the density of the primary phase, Si is the rate tween phases is defined as
of creation by addition from the dispersed phase plus any
user-defined sources. The quantity Ji is the diffusion flux 
n 
n
Rpq = Kpq (up − uq ) (146)
arising due to concentration gradients. For turbulent flows p=1 p=1
the diffusion flux is defined as
  where Kpq = Kqp is the interphase momentum exchange
μt
Ji = − ρq Di,m + ∇Yi (142) coefficient. This coefficient is defined as
Sct
αq αp ρp l
where Di,m is the diffusion coefficient of species i in the Kpq = (147)
τp
mixture, μt is the turbulent viscosity and Sct is the turbulent
Schmidt number whose default value is 0.7. where τp is the particulate relaxation time

ρ p dp
Continuity Equation for Secondary Phases When the Eu- τp = (148)
18μq
ler multiphase model is enabled, additional transport equa-
tion for each secondary phase is solved. The quantity trans- where dp is the diameter of droplets of phase p. The quantity
ported for each secondary phase q is the effective phase den- l appearing in Eq. (147) is a drag function whose definition
sity αq ρq . The continuity equation of phase q, can be written depends on the applied momentum exchange model. In this
as follows work the function is defined as
∂  n
CD Re
αq ρq + ∇ · (αq ρq uq ) = (mpq − mqp ) + Sq (143) l= (149)
∂t 24
p=1
and the selected functional dependence of the drag co-
The volume fraction of the primary phase is determined us- efficient is by Schiller and Naumann [79] as defined in
ing Eq. (137). Sect. 5.3.2.
The evaporation of water in the rain zone causes that
Conservation of Momentum The momentum equation a source of momentum due to mass transfer occurs, since
solved when the Euler multiphase model is enabled is whenever mass is transferred from one phase to the other,
both momentum and energy are transferred too. This source
∂
(αq ρq uq ) + ∇ · (αq ρq uq uq ) of momentum is prescribed using the User Defined Function
∂t (UDF) mechanism. This source Fi is introduced to momen-
= −αq ∇p + ∇ · τ̄¯q + αq ρq g tum equations of each phase.

n 
m
+ (Rpq + mpq upq − mqp uqp ) + Fi (144) Energy Equation To describe the energy transfer in Euler
p=1 i=1 multiphase model, a separate enthalpy equation is solved for
each phase
where p is the pressure shared by all phases, τ̄¯q is the stress-
∂
strain tensor, g is the vector of gravitational acceleration, (αq ρq hq ) + ∇ · (αq ρq uq hq )
Rpq is an interaction force between phases, Fi are addi- ∂t
tional forces acting on phase q i.e., external body force, vir- ∂p ¯
= −αq + τ̄q : ∇uq − ∇ · qq
tual mass force, lift force and other user defined sources. ∂t
The external body force, virtual mass force and lift force are  n
not included in the model of the rain zone. The local bal- + (Qpq + mpq hpq − mqp hqp ) + Sq
ance conditions of force interaction yields Rpq = −Rqp and p=1
Rqq = 0. The velocities upq and uqp are the interphase ve-  m 

locities and mpq mass transferred from phase p to phase q −∇ · hi Ji (150)
and mpq is the mass transferred from phase q to phase p. i=1
The stress-strain tensor of phase q is defined as
where hq is the specific enthalpy of phase q, qq is the heat
 
  flux, Sq is a source term that includes sources of enthalpy,
¯τ̄q = αq μq ∇uq + ∇uTq + αq λq − 2 μq ∇ · uq I (145)
3 Qpq is the intensity of heat exchange between the pth and
qth phases (e.g., convection heat transfer between droplets
where μq and λq are shear and bulk viscosity of phase q, and air), hpq is the interphase enthalpy (e.g., the enthalpy
respectively, and I is a unit tensor. The interaction force be- of the evaporating water at the temperature of the droplets).
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
The last term in Eq. (150) represents the transport of en-
thalpy due to species diffusion. In this case it will be in-
cluded for the primary phase only. The heat exchange be-
tween phases must comply with the local balance condi-
tions, thus Qpq = −Qqp and Qqq = 0.
Within the framework of this paper, the interphase heat
transfer due to evaporation in the rain zone is accounted for
by appropriate definition of the source term Sq . Therefore,
the quantities hpq , hqp , mpq and mqp are zero at all times.
The source Sq in each energy equation is computed using
the UDF mechanism.
Turbulence Model The most common treatment of turbu-
lence for industrial applications is based on the RANS ap-
proach. Within this study the Reynolds stresses are modelled
using the Boussinesq hypothesis [87, 89] and the realizable
− ρop gx (153)
k– model. Application of this model requires solution of
two additional transport equations; for turbulence kinetic en-
is the real static pressure, ρop is the operating den-
ergy k and turbulence dissipation rate . The turbulent vis-
cosity μt is a function of k and . The turbulence model is
similar in the form to the standard k– model, however has
several refinements that make it more accurate and reliable
= ∇p + ρop g (154)
for a wider class of flows. Standard wall function is used for
wall boundary conditions. For multiphase flows, the turbu-
lence model have to be further adjusted in order to account
for the many additional terms appearing in the multiphase
momentum equations. This makes the modelling of turbu-
lence in multiphase simulations more complex. There are
three versions of the multiphase k– model available: the
mixture turbulence model, dispersed turbulence model and
turbulence model for each phase. The selected version is the
dispersed model, which is appropriate when the concentra-
tions of the secondary phases are low, which is the case in
the cooling tower. It should be stressed that this turbulence
model requires that the transport equations should be solved
for the primary phase only, which is the air in this case. Re-
fer to [20] for further information regarding this turbulence
model.
Equation of State The set of described above equations
is supplemented with equation of state. For incompressible
flow, with enabled energy and species convection-diffusion
equations, the density of the air can be specified as a func-
tion of temperature and composition. Since the variations of
pressure in the cooling tower are small, the incompressible
ideal gas model is selected. The density of air is calculated
as
pop
ρ= (151)
RT
where pop is the operating pressure and R is the individual
gas constant. For multicomponent fluids, it can be written as

m Buoyant flows exhibit strong two-way coupling between
Yi
R = (MR) (152)
Mi
i=1
93
where (MR) is the universal gas constant and Mi is the
molecular weight of species i. The operating pressure pop
entering Eq. (151) is constant, static absolute pressure. It
should be specified by the user of the code, as the repre-
sentative, constant pressure in the domain.
Modelling Buoyancy Induced Flows Modelling buoyancy
induced flows, like that in the cooling tower, require addi-
tional effort. The momentum equation in the direction of
gravitational acceleration require inclusion of body force
term resulting from buoyancy, as was presented in Eq. (144).
This term is, however, modified by redefinition of static
pressure. The static pressure p, does not include the hydro-
static head, i.e. the static pressure p is
p = p
where p
sity, to be specified by the user. The real pressure gradient in
Eq. (144) can therefore be written as
∇p
Thus, the body force term due to buoyancy has the form
(ρ − ρop )g (155)
The operating density is the representative density in the do-
main. In case of the cooling tower, the operating density
should be specified as the representative density of the at-
mospheric air.
An alternative approach in the free convection modelling
is by the Boussinesq model, where the body force due to
convection is expressed as
(ρ − ρop )g ≈ −ρop β(T − Top )g (156)
where β is the thermal expansion coefficient and Top is the
operating temperature to be specified as the representative
temperature in the domain. This model, however, can not
predict the influence of moisture content in the air on the
buoyancy.
The strength of natural convection can be measured by
the Rayleigh number Ra
βΔT ρgL3
Ra = (157)
μa
where β is the thermal expansion coefficient. Rayleigh num-
bers lower than 108 indicate laminar flow, with transition to
turbulence in the range 108 –1010 . As the characteristic di-
mension L in the cooling tower is large, a fully turbulent
buoyancy induced flow is expected.
the momentum and energy equations [85]. According to Ver-
steeg and Malalasekera [87] the buoyancy term given by
94 A. Klimanek

Eq. (155) can be a source of serious instabilities in the solu- on the predicted results when compared to the standard k–
tion process. Often under-relaxation of the equations is re- model.
quired and sometimes a transient approach is recommended The model presented here was already discussed to some
for obtaining steady state solution. For some free convection extend in [42]. Hereafter some more details will be pro-
problems, no steady state solution exists and an unsteady vided. The modelled cooling tower is a real industrial object
simulation have to be performed. Since engineers are often equipped with a counterflow film fill, on which experimental
interested in time averaged quantities, the mean values are tests have been performed. The object under consideration is
then calculated. 100 m high Cooling tower no. 9 at the Łaziska Power Plant.
The buoyancy affects also the turbulence production and The experimental data and detailed information on the ge-
dissipation. Therefore, additional generation terms in the ometry and installed components have been published by
turbulence model need to be included in order to account Stechman [82].
for the buoyancy induced effects [87]. As stated in Fluent’s The presented model is axisymmetric. As a result it can-
manual, for buoyant flows, the generation term is always in- not be used to predict cross wind effects so that the applica-
cluded in the transport equation for k. Inclusion of the gen- tion of the axisymmetric model is limited to the operation in
eration term in the  equation is an option for the user [20]. stagnant air environment.
This option is, however, not available when the Euler-Euler
multiphase model is enabled. Tests performed by the au- 5.5.1 Characteristics of the Analyzed Cooling tower
thor of this study indicate that the buoyancy effects are not
included in the k– model when the Eulerian multiphase Geometry of the Tower The tower under consideration is
model is enabled. 100 m high hyperboloid of 75 m base diameter. Heat and
mass transfer between water and air occur in the 0.9 m high
5.5 2D Axisymmetric Model of a Natural Draft fill zone. The rain zone is 5.3 m high and the height of the
Wet-Cooling Tower spray zone is 1.35 m. The water droplets carried by the air
stream are removed by the drift eliminator installed above
The cooling tower affects the surrounding atmosphere at the spray zone. The flow of water droplets is not, however,
large distances. As the state of the atmosphere influences modelled outside the rain zone, thus the drift eliminator is
the operation of the cooling tower, the computational do-
a source of pressure drop to the air flow only. The remain-
main should encompass not only the tower itself but also a
ing dimensions of the tower and installed components are
large volume of the surrounding air. This requires an intro-
presented in Figs. 25 and 26. The numerical model is ax-
duction of fictitious boundaries separating the air included
isymmetric, with the axis placed at the center of the tower.
in the computational domain from the surrounding atmo-
Numerical tests performed by the author of the paper shown,
sphere. In order to reduce the influence of boundary condi-
that the computational domain can be a 300 m high cylinder
tions prescribed on that fictitious boundaries, the dimension
of the computational domain should be of the order of a few
hundred meters. On the other hand, the dimensions of the
channels of the real fill are of the order of a few millime-
ters. The scales differing by several orders of magnitudes
make the task of generation a good quality mesh of reason-
able number of DOFs almost impossible. The problem of
large scale difference is reduced to some extent by applica-
tion of the low dimensional sub-models of the fill presented
in Sects. 2 and 3. Then the sub-models can be projected on
much coarser mesh than that, required for direct modelling
of the phenomena in that region.
In the boundary-free shear region above the tower, where
the plume interacts with the surrounding air, dense meshes
should be used to capture the small scale phenomena occur-
ring in this zone, specifically the diffusivity of turbulence
responsible for the dissipation of the energy of the plume.
This phenomenon can affect the predicted draft of the tower.
As mentioned before the realizable k– model has been used
to avoid also the round jet anomaly. Since the radius of the
tower is large the anomaly can also have a small impact Fig. 25 Dimensions of the analyzed tower
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 95

spray zone is given by Eq. (120), thus the final formula ap-
plied here to determine the Merkel number in both zones is

 0.6  0.5
Ga Ga
Me = Mef i + Mesz = 1.744 + 0.2Hsz
Gw Gw
(159)

where the height of the spray zone is Hsz = 1.35 m.

The Loss Coefficients The inertial resistance factor rela-

tionship for the fill is given by
Fig. 26 Dimensions of the interior components
Cf i = (9.7 + 0.9Gw )/Hf i (160)

Table 4 Nominal design parameters of the analyzed cooling tower whilst for the spray zone
 
Parameter Quantity Unit Ga −1.32
Csz = 0.52 (161)
Gw
Water flow rate, Vw 30,000 m3 /h
Heat rejection rate, Q 292 MW The drift eliminator of height Hde = 0.13 m is installed
Inlet water temperature, Twi 32.4 °C 3.1 m above the spray system. The inertial resistance factor
Cooled water temperature, Two 24 °C is Cde = 23.1 1/m. The loss coefficient for pillars support-
Ambient air temperature, Ta 15 °C ing the tower are determined according to Eq. (133). The
Ambient air humidity ratio, X 7.68 g/kg loss coefficient of load-bearing elements installed inside the
Atmospheric pressure, p 993 hPa
tower has been selected to be ζ = 5.

5.5.2 Computational Mesh

of 300 m diameter in order to reduce the influence of bound-
ary conditions on the flow field inside the domain. The do-
main encompasses the tower located in the center of the re-
gion as well as the surrounding air. Other authors used both,
smaller [75, 91, 92] and greater [2, 3] computational do-
mains.
Nominal Parameters of the Cooling Tower Nominal de-
sign parameters of the cooling tower under consideration are
summarized in Table 4.
The Merkel Number in the Fill and Spray Zones A film fill
of height Hf i = 0.9 m and total area A = 4140 m2 is in-
stalled in the tower. The experimentally determined Merkel
number according to Merkel theory is given by
 0.6
Ga
Mef i = 1.6 (158)
Gw
Since the Merkel number is given according to Merkel the-
ory and the method applied here is equivalent to the Poppe
method, Eq. (158) is modified. As discussed in Sect. 2.3.1,
it was shown by Kloppers and Kröger [47] that the differ-
ence between these two values of Merkel number is approxi-
mately 9 %. Thus Eq. (158) has been increased by this value.
As discussed in Sect. 5.2.3, the analysis of the spray zone is
incorporated into the fill model. The Merkel number in the
In order to solve the governing partial differential equations
(PDEs) of fluid mechanics the partial differentials are dis-
cretized using the Finite Volume method. The approximate
equations are solved on a numerical mesh created in the do-
main of interest [24]. The quality of the mesh greatly in-
fluences both the accuracy and the convergence rate of the
iterative solution. Though the generation of the grid is time
consuming, time spent on a good quality mesh generation is
an investment in the accuracy of the result [17]. The mesh
represents the geometry of the domain and this is a source
of the discretization errors, since the representation is al-
ways approximate. The grid have to be fine enough to re-
solve the gradients of flow variables that are unknown at
the stage of grid generation, therefore usually further refine-
ments of the mesh are required. It is often the case, that the
number of computational nodes is limited by the available
memory, especially in modelling of large industrial prob-
lems. This is in contrast to the so called numerical diffusion
(false diffusion) that is inversely proportional to the number
of nodes [17] and therefore can be reduced by decreasing
the grid cell sizes, which increases the overall mesh size.
The numerical diffusion can also be reduced by using higher
order discretization schemes and generating a mesh aligned
with the flow. The latter is often difficult to attain. Also rapid
changes in the grid size translate into larger truncation er-
rors [20]. These issues require addressing the problem of
optimal mesh generation in each case.
96 A. Klimanek

Fig. 28 Histograms of the cell squish index

Fig. 27 The mesh near the tower inlet, rain, fill and spray zones

At the stage of grid generation, the quality of the mesh

can be verified by evaluating different grid quality criteria
available in Fluent. The advised criteria differ for various
cell types [20]. The following criteria have been compared
in order to access the mesh quality: cell squish index (value 0
for good mesh and 1 for degenerate mesh), cell equiangle
skew (value of 0 indicates a equiangular cell, and a value of 1
indicates a completely degenerate cell), aspect ratio (aspect
ratios greater than 5 in general should be avoided).
The mesh is built out of 154,000 hybrid (structured and
unstructured) quadrilateral cells with cell sizes ranging be-
tween 0.1 m and 1.3 m. The grid is refined in regions of
expected high gradients of flow variables, i.e. in the region
close to the tower inlet, the rain, fill and spray zones and
in the free shear region above the tower. The mesh near the Fig. 29 Histogram of the cell equiangle skew
tower inlet is presented in Fig. 27.
The quality of the mesh as histograms of cell squish index
5.5.3 Boundary Conditions
and cell equiangle skew are shown in Figs. 28 and 29. As can
be seen in both cases the values of the parameters of most of
The schematic of assigned boundary condition types is de-
the cells are close to 0 and are decreasing rapidly. The max-
picted in Fig. 30. Pressure inlet boundary conditions are de-
imum aspect ratio in the domain amounted 3.26. Comparing
fined at the side surface of the computational domain, while
the obtained grid parameters with the recommended values on the horizontal upper boundary pressure outlet condition
leads to a conclusion, that at this stage, the grid quality can is formulated. The pressure inlet BC is the total pressure
be assessed as good. (static plus dynamic). A value of 0 has been specified at
As mentioned in Sect. 5.4, the standard wall function ap- this boundary. The pressure outlet is the gauge static pres-
proach is used to link the not resolved viscosity affected re- sure only, therefore the value of 0 is assigned. It should be
gion with the fully turbulent region of wall bounded flow. noted, that the pressure p solved for by the Fluent code does
This procedure requires placing the center of the near-wall not include the hydrostatic head in the pressure definition.
cell between 30 and 300 of nondimensional parameter y + . The axis BC is assigned at the centerline of the tower to ac-
The y + is a solution dependent variable and therefore is not count for the axisymmetric model. On the wall of the tower
known a priori, however it can be estimated using experi- as well as at the ground, non-permeability and no slip condi-
mentally determined skin friction coefficient. The mesh can tions are formulated. It should be noted that since the tower
be adapted after the solution is obtained to refine/coarsen the dimensions are large, the no-slip boundary conditions at the
near wall mesh to fulfill the 30 < y + < 300 criterion. wall has little effect on the obtained flow fields. It has been
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Fig. 30 Schematic of assigned boundary conditions
verified by Reuter [75] that taking slip boundary condition
instead of no-slip at the walls has negligible effect on the
cooling tower performance.
The bottom boundary under the rain zone requires the
water droplets to be removed from the domain since the
droplets fall to the water basin. On the other hand, the wa-
ter surface is non-permeable for the air, and the air in con-
tact with this surface should behave more or less like in
contact with a solid wall. This problem is overcome by re-
definition of the velocity inlet boundary condition specified
for both, the primary and the secondary phases. The veloc-
ity inlet BC allows definition of both normal and tangential
components of the velocity, temperatures, volume fraction
of secondary phase and species mass fraction for the pri-
mary phase. The no-slip and non-permeability condition for
the primary phase p can be written as
uxp = 0
uyp = 0
Tp = Tq (162)
YO2 = const
YH 2O = const
where uxp and uyp are the tangential and normal velocity
components of the primary phase, respectively. The air tem-
perature Tp at the water surface is assumed to be equal to the
temperature of the water droplets Tq . The mass fractions of
the air and water vapor at the surface are assumed to be equal
to that of the atmospheric air. These conditions are not fully
justified, however this has little influence on the final result.
If one assumes that the water droplets attained their terminal
velocities, and they flow perfectly downwards in the vicin-
ity of the water basin, the condition for water droplets can
be viewed as a zero normal velocity gradient and zero tan-
gential velocity. The local temperature of the water and the
volume fraction at the water surface in the basin is equal to
97
Fig. 31 Coupling procedure between Fluent and the external subrou-
tines
the temperature of the droplets entering the basin. This as-
sumptions can be written as
uxq = 0
duyq
=0
dy
(163)
dTq
=0
dy
dαq
=0
dy
where uxq and uyq are the tangential and normal compo-
nents of the secondary phase, respectively, Tq is the tem-
perature of the water droplets and αq their volume fraction.
The turbulent kinetic energy k and its dissipation rate  are
assumed to be 10−3 at this boundary. The boundary condi-
tions (162) and (163) are implemented using the UDF.
Porous Media Model As already mentioned, the fill, spray
zone and drift eliminator are modelled as a porous medium.
This selection is due to the ease of implementation of mo-
mentum transfer. To attain this, Eq. (123) and the inertial re-
sistance factors presented in Sect. 5.3 are subsequently used.
The porosity in each case is γ = 1.
The distributions of heat and mass sources within the
fill are imported from either the POD-RBF network model
(Sect. 3) or from the detailed heat and mass transfer model
presented in Sect. 2. These sources are also assigned within
the porous media model.
5.5.4 Coupling Procedure
The coupling procedure between the external programs and
the CFD code are presented schematically in Fig. 31. As
mentioned before the subroutines are implemented using the
98
UDF mechanism. It should be stressed, that the various pro-
grams can be executed at different stages of the CFD simu-
lation. For example, the heat and mass sources are evaluated
every few time steps performed by Fluent, whilst the mo-
mentum source calculations are executed at every iteration.
5.5.5 Treatment of the Fill
The external model of the fill, for a given set of BCs, pro-
duces a distribution of heat and mass sources along the fill
depth. This model could be implemented directly to the CFD
model to represent the entire fill. However, in order to take
into account the radial nonuniformities in the flow param-
eters, the fill is radially divided into a number of fictitious
vertical channels, such that the fill model can be executed
in each of them. A schematic of the divided fill into vertical
channels is presented in Fig. 32. The BCs for the fill sub-
models are the average temperature, humidity ratio and air
mass flow rate. These parameters have to be read from be-
neath each channel. At the top of the fill the water tempera-
ture and its mass flow rate are well known. These boundary
conditions are required to execute the external sub-model of
heat and mass transfer for each channel. The resultant source
distributions are assigned to the computational cells of the
fictitious channel. The procedure of determining BCs, eval-
uating the sources and their projection onto the CFD mesh
within the vertical channel is presented in Fig. 33. The pro-
cedure is applied to all fictitious vertical channels, thus dis-
tributions to entire fill at a time are assigned. The source
Fig. 32 A schematic of divided fill into fictitious vertical channels
Fig. 33 The channel procedure
A. Klimanek
distributions are updated every few time steps performed by
the Fluent code at the beginning of the simulation and every
time step when a stable flow field is obtained.
5.5.6 Treatment of the Rain Zone
It is assumed that the water droplets can appear in the rain
zone only. The entrance of the water to the rain zone is real-
ized by definition of mass, momentum and energy sources to
the secondary phase. These sources are assigned beneath the
fill where the water droplets enter the rain zone. The sources
are calculated according to local water parameters.
5.5.7 Solution Strategies
The Rayleigh number calculated based on the tower base
diameter and typical air and water conditions scales as
Ra ∼ 1014 . This is far above the transition region and indi-
cates a fully turbulent free convection. Computational tests,
as well as observations of the behaviour of plumes, lead to
conclusion that the mean flow inside and above the tower
is unsteady. This is especially visible above the drift elim-
inators and the tower exit, where the periodically chang-
ing buoyancy induced flow develops. The rise to the tem-
poral behavior is also given by the free shear boundary with
strong turbulence. Computations performed with a steady
state solver leads to stable but relatively high residuals. This
indicates changes in the flow field during the iterative pro-
cess. The reason of high residuals is also connected with the
inherent convergence difficulties of multiphase flow prob-
lems. The unsteadiness of the flow is very cumbersome from
the computational point of view. The simulation becomes
computationally expensive and in order to obtain meaning-
ful time averaged quantities the simulated flow times have
to be long.
The time steps of the simulation have to be selected such
that the changes in the flow field are captured. It can be de-
termined from the time scale of the natural convection. Ac-
cording to [20], the time scale can be estimated knowing the
associated Ra number as
L2
τ∼ (RaPr)−0.5 (164)
a
and the corresponding time step should be estimated as
τ
Δt ≈ (165)
4
Larger time steps may lead to divergence of the simula-
tion [20]. The estimated time step, with additional margin
for uncertainty, is taken as Δt = 1 s.
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
Fig. 34 Mean velocity in the tower and surrounding air
Fig. 35 The stream function, kg/s, showing the recirculation near the
tower inlet
5.6 Sample Results
Sample fields of calculated variables in the cooling tower
and surrounding environment are presented below. The re-
sults were obtained for the following inlet parameters:
– atmospheric air temperature Ta = 302.45 K,
– atmospheric air humidity ratio X = 0.0113 kg/kg,
– inlet water temperature Twi = 309.75 K,
– inlet water mass flux Gwi = 2 kg/m2 s.
All remaining quantities were specified as described in
Sect. 5.5.1.
In Figs. 34–38 the temporal averages of air velocity mag-
nitude, temperature, pressure and mass fraction of water va-
por are presented. As can be seen, the velocity above the
tower increases to achieve maximum of 12.4 m/s.
This is due to the fact, that the warm and humid air
is constantly subjected to buoyant force. The velocity in-
99
Fig. 36 Mean temperature in the tower and surrounding air
Fig. 37 Gauge static pressure in the tower and surrounding air relative
to 101,325 Pa
creases until the energy of the rising plume dissipates into
the surrounding air by mixing in the free shear region. Tests
performed on higher domains showed that the velocity is
later reduced as the buoyant force diminishes. As shown in
Fig. 35, where the stream function is presented, there is a re-
circulation region under the fill near the tower entrance. The
high velocity of entering air and slightly higher position of
the fill above the tower shell are the cause of low pressure re-
gion and recirculation of air. This phenomena is unfavorable
as it reduces the air flow through the fill near the tower shell
and increases the cooled water temperature. In Fig. 36 the air
temperature field is presented. It can be seen that the highest
temperature in the rising plume is in the center of the tower.
The air in the center of the tower travels the longest distance
through the rain zone and is further warmed up in the fill.
The air near the entrance to the tower is cooled and its tem-
perature is lower than that in the surroundings. This is due
100
Fig. 38 Mean water vapor mass fraction in the tower and surrounding
air
Fig. 39 The volume fraction of water droplets in the rain zone
to the low temperature and intensive evaporation of water
droplets in that region. In Fig. 37 the gauge static pressure
in the tower and the surrounding air is presented. The pres-
sure field shown is relative to 101,325 Pa. As can be seen the
lowest pressure is just above the fill and is increasing up to
the pressure in the atmosphere where it is almost constant.
It should be stressed that the hydrostatic head in the atmo-
sphere is not shown. In Fig. 38 the mass fraction of water
vapor is presented. As is expected, the contours are similar
to that of air temperature, since the mass transfer occurs in
the same regions as heat transfer. In Figs. 39 and 40, the
volume fraction and velocity field of the secondary phase
are presented.
The volume fraction is the highest just beneath the fill,
where a source of water mass is assigned. The volume frac-
tion reduces as the water droplets fall downwards the rain
zone and their velocities increase. In Fig. 41 radial profiles
A. Klimanek
Fig. 40 The velocity of water droplets in the rain zone
Fig. 41 Radial profiles of cooled water temperatures beneath the fill
and in the water basin
of cooled water temperatures beneath the fill and in the water
basin are shown. As can be seen the cooled water tempera-
ture decreases along the tower radius and rapidly increases
near the tower shell. The maximum water temperature under
the fill is 309.72 K which is just slightly lower than the inlet
water temperature. This indicates that the cooling in the fill
in this small region is very limited due to the recirculation
of air occurring in this region (cf. Fig. 35). The recirculation
region is small, however it occurs on the largest circumfer-
ence of the tower and therefore may have significant effect
on average cooled water temperature. Reduction of the re-
circulation zone is important and may be realized by appro-
priate rounding of the inlet of the tower [75]. The cooling in
the rain zone is obviously most intensive near the inlet due
to high velocity of the inflowing cool and dry air.
In Figs. 42 and 43 the mass and heat sources calculated
using the POD-RBF network model are presented.
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 101

Fig. 42 Calculated mass sources in the fill Fig. 44 Calculated mass sources due to evaporation of water in the
rain zone

Fig. 43 Calculated heat sources in the fill

Fig. 45 Calculated heat sources due to evaporation of water in the rain
zone
The highest mass and heat rejection rates occur near the
tower shell but beyond the recirculation region. This com-
plies with the maximum air flow rates that appear in this
region. Whilst the mass sources are always positive, the
heat sources near the tower shell at the bottom of the fill
are negative. As discussed earlier, the air can be cooled by
the evaporating water, when the air is dry to make the heat
transfer rate due to evaporation dominant. This occurs only
close to the tower shell where the air is moisturized in the
rain zone to a small degree only. In Figs. 44 and 45 the
mass, heat and momentum sources calculated as described
in Sects. 5.2.2 and 5.3.2, are presented. The heat sources pre-
sented in Fig. 45 are due to evaporation only. The convection
heat transfer in this region is calculated internally by Fluent
and contour of this field is not available. The axial and ra-
dial momentum sources presented in Figs. 46 and 47 give
rise to the pressure drop of air in axial and radial directions,
respectively. Fig. 46 Calculated axial momentum sources in the rain zone
102
Fig. 47 Calculated radial momentum sources in the rain zone
Fig. 48 The influence of number of channels on the air temperature
profiles
5.6.1 Influence of Number of Channels
The number of the fictitious fill channels, where the low di-
mensional heat and mass transfer models are applied, is not
known a priori. This number should be large enough to take
into account the radial changes of flow parameters and as
small as possible to reduce the computational time. Simula-
tions have been repeated with various number of channels
nch and the influence on water and air flow parameters have
been determined. The influence on the air temperature and
velocity above the fill is presented in Figs. 48 and 49, re-
spectively, whereas on the water temperature directly under
the fill in Fig. 50. The obtained profiles of air temperature
for 20 and 40 channels practically coincide near the tower
center and start to oscillate, with considerable amplitudes
near the tower shell. For 80 and 120 channels the profiles
practically coincide, but near the center of the tower, where
A. Klimanek
Fig. 49 The influence of number of channels on the air velocity pro-
files
Fig. 50 The influence of number of channels on the water temperature
under the fill
for 80 channels they considerable oscillations occur. As is
visible in Fig. 49, the influence on the air velocity is very lit-
tle. This profile shows also that the changes of velocity with
radius are very small but near the tower shell, where an in-
crease of velocity is observed and an abrupt drop very close
to the shell. The profile of water temperature is only slightly
affected by the number of channels used. Results obtained
for 20 channels differ considerably near the tower shell and
very close to the tower center. The profiles obtained for 40
channels are similar to that for 120 channels. For 80 chan-
nels, there seems to be considerable oscillations of the tem-
peratures near the tower center. The changes of water tem-
perature profiles translate down to the bottom of the rain
zone. As the source of the oscillations near the tower shell
can be easily recognized to be affected by the low number
of channels, the source of oscillations for 80 channels near
the tower center is not known. It should be stressed, that
there is very little influence of the number of channels on
the mass weighted average water temperature. In the consid-
ered case, the average temperature directly under the fill for
20 channels amounted 306.029 K, whereas for 120 channels
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers 103

306.056 K. Thus, a conclusion can be drawn, that the same

average water temperature can be obtained for 20 channels
as for 120 channels. In order to obtain smooth profiles of the
flow parameters, the number of channels of choice should
be as large as 120.

5.7 Validation of the Model

The 2D axisymmetric model was validated against experi-

mental data published by Stechman [82], where a full scale
cooling tower experimental tests are presented. Six experi-
mental tests were run with varying water temperatures, air
temperatures and inlet air humidity ratios. The water was
Fig. 51 Time dependence of temperature at the tower outlet near the
evenly distributed over the fill at Gw = 2 kg/m2 s. The vali- shell x = 21 m at height y = 100 m. The power obtained from Fourier
dation input data and results were presented in [42]. The ob- transform
tained results showed that the maximum difference in cooled
water temperature was 0.5 °C and the cooled water temper-
atures were both higher and lower than the measured values.
Considering the difficulties in measurements of large scale
objects and numerous assumptions made in the simulation,
this difference can be considered as small.
It should be stressed, that validation of CFD simulations
usually concern comparison of many data points or even en-
tire fields of parameters. In the case of cooling towers, un-
less additional data is measured, the cooled water temper-
atures are usually the only data available for comparison.
The detailed information, that is available from the CFD
simulation cannot therefore be fully validated. It should be
stressed, that the 2D axisymmetric model used in the simu-
lations does not take into account the wind effects on water
cooling and therefore the influence of wind is not taken into Fig. 52 The power obtained from Fourier transform. The fluctuations
appear in cycles of 24.26 s each
account here. The performed validation of the cooling tower
model, together with validation of the partial models (fill,
rain zone and drift eliminator) indicate the plausibility of periodically. In Fig. 51 variations of temperature at the tower
the applied methods and obtained results. outlet near the shell at r = 21 m and at altitude y = 100 m.
Williamson et al. [91] reported similar deviations of their As can be seen the variations are not substantial. As shown
CFD model when compared with measurements, with maxi- in Fig. 52, the Fourier transform of the signal reveals the pe-
mum difference of 0.7 °C. Al-Waked et al. [2, 3] showed that riod of the oscillations at this place of 24.26 s. The variations
the difference of cooled water temperature of their model are not considerable, however, in order to obtain compara-
and design data of the modelled cooling tower was smaller ble quantities a meaningful temporal averages should be cal-
than 3 %. Reuter et al. [75] presented results comparing a culated. Three solution cases of the original and 2 adapted
CFD model with a 1D model of a tower with rounded tower grids were compared. In each case the data sampling inter-
inlet. This comparison revealed very good agreement be- vals used to compute the averages amounted 500 s, which
tween the results. As mentioned by the authors, these re- corresponds to more than 20 periods of the oscillations. Flu-
sults were however fortuitous, since the authors observed ent provides data sampling tool for computing time averages
larger differences of that model in case of sharp tower in- of a few flow variables. Within this study, the mean temper-
let. ature and velocity magnitude are compared. Adaption of the
mesh has been performed using the built-in Fluent gradient
5.7.1 Grid Independence adaption tool. The approach used is curvature, which selects
the cells to be adapted using the Laplacian of the solution
The flow field solution varies slightly in time. The time de- variable (see [20] for more details). The grid was adapted
pendence is especially visible above the fill near the shell by combination of mean temperature and velocity gradients.
and above the tower where the buoyancy changes the flow The results were compared by displaying profiles of velocity
104
Fig. 53 Positions of section lines created to compare the results
Fig. 54 Comparison of mean temperature profiles at y = 2 m cross
section for the original and adapted meshes
and temperature on lines sectioning the geometry at various
altitudes. One of the lines is vertical and sections the interior
of the tower at the radius r = 14 m. Positions of the lines
are presented in Fig. 53. For brevity in Figs. 54, 55, and 56
the temperature profiles at selected altitude cross sections
only are presented. As can be seen adapting the grid have
very little influence on the temperature. Similar trends have
been obtained for air velocity. It can therefore be concluded
that after second adaption the solution is independent on the
mesh.
5.8 Optimization of the Performance of the Cooling Tower
An attempt has been made to apply the developed model
of the cooling tower to improve performance of the cooling
tower by varying the radial distribution of fill depth and the
water mass flow rate. The idea was to change gradually the
A. Klimanek
Fig. 55 Comparison of mean temperature profiles at y = 160 m cross
section for the original and adapted meshes
Fig. 56 Comparison of mean temperature profiles at r = 14 m cross
section for the original and adapted meshes
depth of the fill and use nonuniform spray densities. Sev-
eral fill profiles and water distributions have been analyzed
prior to employing a admittedly time consuming optimiza-
tion procedure. The results of this research have been pub-
lished elsewhere [39]. The analysis has shown that the im-
provement in cooling efficiency is marginal, if any. Though
the profiles of the water temperature leaving the fill were
in some of the analyzed cases considerably different than
in the reference cases, the transport phenomena in the rain
zone equilibrate the temperature distributions resulting in
marginal change in the average cooled water temperature.
The analyzes have been performed separately for fill depth
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
and water mass flow rate distributions. Thus the effects of
both changes have not been analyzed.
Similar results were obtained by Williamson et al. [93].
The authors developed an extended 1D zonal model of a
cooling tower to be able to obtain fast response from the
model for multiple fitness function evaluations. Four zones
of constant fill depth and four of constant water mass flow
rate were analyzed. The optimal results (distribution of fill
depth and water mass flow rate) were then verified in the
CFD model. The final results showed marginal improvement
in cooled water temperature.
5.9 3D Model of a Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Tower
A 3D model of a cooling tower has also been developed by
the author of this paper. The incremental approach applied
during development of cooling tower CFD model was to di-
vided into several tasks where the aim was to:
– decompose the simulations into, preferably stand alone,
models of partial phenomena
– validate the partial models and improve their numerical
efficiency
– investigate the correctness of their mutual interactions in
the final model of the tower constructed as an assembly
of the partial phenomena.
Applying this approach allowed to easily extend the 2D ax-
isymmetric model to 3D by application of minor changes
previously developed models and programs implemented in
the user defined function mechanisms. Working with 3D
simulations requires immense computer resources and leads
to very long execution times. Thus the developed programs
have also been adapted to execution in parallel (multiple
processors) and the calculations were performed on a high
performance computer cluster. Majority of tests in the last
stage of the development of the model have been performed
using axisymmetric formulations. As at no cross-wind con-
ditions the operation of the tower can be described with rea-
sonable accuracy assuming axial symmetry. Such a model
can also be validated by field measurements.
Obviously, the 2D model cannot capture several opera-
tion modes where the 3D effects are of importance. Influ-
ence of wind and presence of other cooling towers, flue gas
discharge through the tower and winter operation are just a
few examples of such situations.
The 3D model is a natural extension of the already de-
scribed model of reduced dimensionality. In order to verify
the 3D results the 2D solutions were treated as benchmarks.
Thus, the geometry of the cooling tower in the 3D model
was the same as in the case of the 2D simulations. The nu-
merical model encompassed the interior of the tower as well
as the surrounding environment comprising a 300 m high
cuboid with a square 200 m by 200 m base. The two di-
mensional simulations have shown that the reduction of the
105
computational domain outside the tower does not influence
the results. Thus the volume of discretized domain has been
slightly reduced. The computational mesh consisted of 4.84
million hybrid (structured and unstructured) finite volumes
ranging between 0.12 m (inside the tower) and 5 m (outer
boundaries of the domain).
Simulations performed using the 3D model have showed
considerably different flow patterns than those resulting
from the axisymmetric simulations. The differences were
substantial for all flow parameters specifically in the domain
above the tower, for example the maximum average veloc-
ity was about 7 m/s and for the 2D axisymmetric model it
was about 12 m/s. The lower air velocities induced higher
average cooled water temperature. The differences in cooled
water temperature amounted 0.6 K. Details of the 3D model
as well as results of the simulations have been presented
in [38].
As mentioned earlier only the 3D models can capture cer-
tain 3D effects occurring during operation of cooling towers,
however only a few authors developed full scale 3D mod-
els [1–3, 72].
6 Summary and Conclusions
The main objective of the paper was to present the modeling
approaches used in development of a complete CFD model
of a natural draft wet-cooling tower. This model is intended
to be capable of predicting cooling tower performance un-
der various operating conditions. The objectives have been
accomplished by applying a step-by-step approach to the
development of the model. The simpler 2D axisymmetric
model has been developed first, which then was extended to
a more precise and numerically demanding 3D model. The
main problem encountered when developing the CFD model
of a natural draft cooling tower is the large difference of ge-
ometrical scales in the transport phenomena occurring in the
object. The need of coping with this question laid the foun-
dation for the selection of models and solution methods used
in the work.
The problem of large scale difference has been circum-
vented by development of sub-models of small scale phe-
nomena (heat, mass and momentum transfer) in the criti-
cal regions of the wet-cooling tower: the spray, fill and rain
zones. Application of the properly designed sub-models re-
sulted in a solution procedure capable of reproducing the
transfer phenomena within a reasonable time.
Much effort has been put into developing the heat and
mass transfer model of the cooling tower fill, where ca. 80 %
of the heat is transferred. A mathematical model describ-
ing this phenomena has been developed and possible solu-
tion method have been presented. Validation of the previ-
ously developed technique [40] against a benchmark solu-
106
tion produced good accuracy being an indicator of physi-
cal correctness of the applied methods. Due to the expected
high computational cost of the implementation of this model
in 3D simulations of the tower, an original technique of
cheap and accurate approximation of the response of the fill
zone has been presented. The approach correlates distribu-
tions of heat and mass sources required for CFD simulation
with air and water flow parameters. The idea of the tech-
nique, based on extracting statistical correlations between
input and output data, employs the Proper Orthogonal De-
composition method to describe the spatial distribution of
the output parameters while using the Radial Basis Function
interpolation to account for the dependence on the input pa-
rameters. Application of the POD-RBF approach had signif-
icantly reduced the computational time, preserving the high
accuracy of the representation.
The heat and mass transfer within the spray zone have
been analyzed together with the fill, as it is often done when
the low dimensional models are used.
The momentum transfer in the fill, spray zone and drift
eliminator have been accounted for using the porous media
model with experimental correlations of the resistance fac-
tors.
In the rain zone of the tower the flow of droplets has been
represented by a Euler-Euler multiphase model. The heat,
mass and momentum transfer have been described by either
models built in the CFD code or implemented by the author
of the paper. This approach turned up to be computation-
ally demanding and difficulties associated with inclusion of
particle size distribution tracking lead to a conclusion that
Lagrangian methods are probably more appropriate for the
purpose of modelling of rain and spray zones.
Based on the developed sub-models a 2D axisymmetric
model has been developed. This model reveals patterns of
the flow variables in the tower and the surrounding atmo-
sphere providing means for more complex analyzes than
available when the standard low dimensional models based
on hydraulic assumptions are used. The model has been val-
idated against experimental data showing good agreement
between the measured and calculated cooled water temper-
atures.
The model has also been applied to analyze the influence
of fill height and water flow radial distribution on the effi-
ciency of cooling. The simulations showed that the radial
profiles of flow parameters exert very little, if any, influence
on the average cooled water temperature. The developed
axisymmetric model can be used in typical what-if analy-
sis, showing the influence of design and flow parameters on
cooling efficiency.
At the last stage of the paper, the three dimensional model
has been briefly described. The simulations showed that the
reduction of dimensionality inherent in axisymmetric for-
mulations considerably influences the resulting pattern of air
A. Klimanek
flow, while only moderately reducing the temperature drop
of the cooling water. The changes in air velocities are most
pronounced above the tower, where the rising plume sways.
The developed 3D model can be applied to analyze prob-
lems of inherent 3D nature as effect of cross-wind, winter
operation of cooling towers, flue gas discharge from desul-
phurization units, etc.
There is a number of unanswered questions and open
problems in the context of the applied methods and their
improvement. Some of the most important are:
– The applied POD-RBF network itself may be improved
by applying other interpolation functions. In large prob-
lems, the dimensionality of the resulting set of equations
of this method is large and the set itself can be poorly con-
ditioned. Therefore replacing the interpolation by approx-
imation of the matrix of amplitudes may lead to smaller
final problem. The question of accuracy should also be
addressed here. Definitions of various radial basis func-
tions usually include adjustable regularization parameter
whose role is to smooth the resulting interpolation func-
tion. Within the framework of the paper the simplified thin
plate spline has been used with the width equal to 1. The
question of appropriate spacing of the training data used
for POD model development is another problem.
– Application of the Euler-Euler multiphase model in the
rain zone of the two dimensional CFD model can be con-
sidered as questionable since it requires solution of 4
additional transport equations within the whole domain.
An alternative approach that has been used by other au-
thors [3, 75, 91] is the Discrete Phase Model (DPM). This
model allows tracking of groups of droplets whose tra-
jectories are computed in the Lagrangian frame. Due to
large number of droplets it is not clear whether the model
is more or less numerically intensive than its continuous
counterpart. The unknown parameter is here the effective
number of particles per track. The flow of droplets in a
3D case is assessed as high as 107 droplets per second
which can also lead to very long computational times.
The advantage of the DPM model is also the possibil-
ity of introducing a distribution of droplet sizes rather
than representing them by a single representative diam-
eter.
– An important problem when developing a cooling tower
model is the lack of complete sets of experimental
data that would comprise benchmark results for simula-
tion. Often partial information is available of both full
scale tower site measurements and the internal equip-
ment characteristics. The usually conducted performance
test measurements are aimed at determination of aver-
age quantities and therefore are not sufficient to per-
form an extensive validation of the complete CFD model.
Thus, there is a need for constructing special experi-
ments which may serve as reliable validation sets for
Numerical Modelling of Natural Draft Wet-Cooling Towers
the developed models. This obviously requires cooper-
ation of the research community with industrial part-
ners.
– The crucial parameter used in the sub-models of evap-
oration and convective cooling in the fill zone is the
mass transfer coefficient. The only way it can be deter-
mined with reasonable accuracy is an experiment. The
difficulty here is that the measurements should be per-
formed on a relatively large object, in order to elimi-
nate the influence of the walls of the apparatus onto the
mass transfer in the fill. Typically the measurements are
performed by the manufacturers of the fill and the re-
sults are given in the form of Merkel’s number. Fre-
quently very little or nothing is known about the test
rigs used by the manufacturers to carry out these exper-
iments.
Acknowledgements This work has been partially supported by RE-
CENT 7FP project, grant No. 245819.
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