JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: J.

IASS

DESIGN OF SOLAR ENHANCED NATURAL DRAFT DRY

COOLING TOWER FOR SOLAR THERMAL POWER PLANTS
Zhiqiang GUAN1, Hal GURGENCI2 and Zheng ZOU3
School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, the University of Queensland, Australia
1
Senior Research Fellow, guan@uq.edu.au
2
Professor, h.gurgenci@uq.edu.au

School of Mechanical Engineering, Chongqing University of Technology, Chongqing 400054, China

3
Lecturer, z.zou@cqut.edu.cn

Editor’s Note: Manuscript submitted 6 January 2015; revision received 19 January 2016; accepted 12 March. This
paper is open for written discussion, which should be submitted to the IASS Secretariat no later than September 2016.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20898/j.iass.2016.187.763

ABSTRACT

For concentrated solar thermal (CST) power plants located in dry and arid areas, dry cooling is the only cost
effective alternative. If using existing dry cooling technology, the CST power generation will be reduced
significantly at high ambient temperatures. This paper presents design options of a novel cooling tower design
concept with the potential to maintain the design-point performance even on very hot days. In this new concept,
a natural draft dry cooling tower is modified by adding a solar collector around its base. The function of the
solar collector is to make the air inside the cooling tower hotter so the buoyancy force increases. In a natural
draft dry cooling tower, increased buoyancy means increased air flow rate through the heat exchangers and,
therefore, increased heat transfer capacity. The end result is power plant efficiencies significantly higher than
what could be achieved with the unmodified design.

Keywords: Solar power, natural draft cooling tower, heat exchanger, dry cooling

1. INTRODUCTION The intrinsic thermal inertia and the ability to

Concentrated solar thermal (CST) power plants use
a large area of mirrors or lenses (collectors) to focus
solar thermal energy incident onto receivers that
have much smaller areas. The geometric
concentration ratio (ratio of the collector aperture
area to the receiver area) varies from low tens to
over a thousand depending on the technology used
[1]. This concentrated solar energy is converted to
heat which drives a heat engine to generate
electricity like any conventional thermal power
plants do.
The four concentrating technologies that are
currently in use commercially include: parabolic
trough, central receiver tower, linear Fresnel, and
parabolic dishes. Different types of concentrating
technologies produce different peak temperatures
and correspondingly varying thermodynamic
efficiencies.
incorporate additional thermal energy storage make
CST plants a reliable and dispatchable base load
generation alternative for the electric grid. The
challenge for CST systems is to produce electricity
that ultimately can compete with other forms of
electricity generation in the marketplace. CST is a
proven technology and is believed to be at an early
stage of its cost reduction curve [2]. A technology
road map towards significantly reduced costs has
been proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy
[3]. One of the cost reduction avenues proposed in
the US study is through new and innovative
technologies to increase the power plant efficiency.
Improvement of power conversion efficiency is one
of the major objectives of the Australian Solar
Thermal Research Initiative (ASTRI) established in
2012.
Power plant efficiency is dominated by
thermodynamic cycle efficiency. The cycle

Copyright © 2016 by Zhiqiang Guan, Hal Gurgenci and Zheng Zou.

Published by the International Association for Shell and Spatial Structures (IASS) with permission. 97
 Vol. 57 (2016) No. 1 March n. 187
efficiency is maximized when the plant operates
between highest possible heat source temperature
and the lowest possible heat sink temperature. An
enhanced cooling system can provides the lowest
possible heat sink temperature to improve the
power plant efficiency.
Water is the preferred medium for power plant
cooling but its availability may be limited by policy
or cost in arid remote areas, where many future
CST plants are likely to be located. The condenser
cooling amounts to over 90% of water consumption
in a typical wet-cooled CST power plant [4]. Dry
cooling of such plants in arid remote areas may be
the only cost-effective option.
While dry cooling helps water conservation and
environmental protection, dry-cooled power plants
suffer lower efficiencies when the ambient air
temperature is high [5]. Therefore, CST plants
using dry cooling will suffer the same way. High
ambient temperatures usually coincide with peak
system demand and higher electricity sale prices.
Thus, an increase in power production using
enhanced cooling system to address high ambient
temperature offers an opportunity to increase the
revenue. High ambient temperatures usually
accompany high solar incidence. This offers an
opportunity of using the solar heat to enhance the
conventional natural draft dry cooling tower
performance. Thereby, the design-point cooling
performance can be maintained even on hot days.
To realise this opportunity, a solar enhanced natural
draft dry cooling tower (SENDDCT) has been
introduced by the Queensland Geothermal Energy
Centre of Excellence (QGECE) of the University of
Queensland.
The proposed solar enhanced natural draft dry
cooling tower (SENDDCT) makes use of the solar
heat to enhance the performance of a conventional
natural draft dry cooling tower. Various design
options have been studied using 3-D numerical
modelling and an optimized SENDDCT
configuration is presented in this paper. The
analysis presented in this paper was performed for a
geothermal plant rather than a CST plant based on
the factor that the hot source in a geothermal power
plant is not affected by the solar incidence. In
applying these results to a CST plant, it should be
recognized the direct application is valid only when
the power block is designed for a fixed turbine inlet
temperature and the increased solar incidence does
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not have an influence on the power conversion
efficiency. This assumption is made to isolate the
benefits of solar enhancement on the cooling tower
from the benefits that will be achieved by higher
temperature in the solar heat collection for the
power block. An actual CST plant power block may
be constructed to make use of the higher solar field
temperatures by increasing the turbine inlet
temperature. This would be a further help to the
power plant in maintaining its design point
performance.
2. CONFIGURATION OF SENDDCT
Natural draft cooling towers function according to
the simple principle of the stack effect. Since warm
air inside the tower is less dense than the ambient
air outside the tower, warm air rises due to
buoyancy and a natural circulation occurs. The
driving force for the natural circulation of air is
proportional to the difference in air density between
the inside and outside of tower and the tower
height. It has been proposed by the authors that
solar energy can be used to heat the air inside a
natural draft dry cooling tower to increase the
density difference.
The proposed configuration of solar enhanced
natural daft dry cooling tower (SENDDCT) is
shown in Figure 1 [6]. The major components in
this SENDDCT include a cooling tower, solar
collectors, and heat exchangers. The solar collectors
are arranged radially around the base of the cooling
tower forming a canopy or a sunroof. The heat
exchangers are placed vertically at the perimeter of
the sunroof. As the air passes through the heat
exchangers, it is first heated by the hot fluid inside
the heat exchangers and then flows under the
sunroof. As the Sun heats the sunroof, the air
underneath the roof gains more heat on its way to
the tower. The hotter air inside the cooling tower
rises much faster. This results in more ambient air
being sucked in, i.e. more cool air through the heat
exchanger bundles. By this arrangement, it would
enhance the performance of a natural draft dry
cooling tower by compensating for high ambient
temperatures by high air flow rates.
The proposed system would exploit the solar energy
during the hottest periods at which the conventional
dry cooling tower would suffer the lowest
performance.
 JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: J. IASS
Figure 1: Configuration of solar enhanced natural draft
dry cooling tower
It should be noted that the concept of SENDDCT
works in the same fashion as a solar chimney power
plant (SCPP). In a SCPP, solar energy is also used
to heat the air under the solar roof to form
continuous air flow inside the tall chimney and the
kinetic energy of the air is used to drive a turbine
inside the chimney to generate electricity. The three
components in a solar chimney power plant are a
tall chimney, solar collectors and a turbine. No
turbine is used in a SENDDCT and the solar heat is
used to increase the air flow through the
condensers.
Since the cooling tower and the heat exchangers are
integrated parts of thermal power plants, the only
extra cost for the proposed SENDDCT is the cost of
the solar collectors.
3. THE IMPROVEMENT OF COOLING
EFFICIENCY BY SENDDCT
The return of the investment by adding the extra
sunroof is fully depended on the extra net power
generated in the plants with SENDDCT. The
cooling performance of a SENDDCT has been
predicted by Zou et al [6].
In Zou et al study, a 50-MWe geothermal power
plant proposed for Cooper Basin, Australia was
used as a case study to demonstrate the improved
performance of the proposed SENDDCT. The
global and direct hourly solar irradiance and
average air hourly temperature records from Lee et
al and Australian Bureau of Meteorology [7, 8]
were used to represent a typical summer day in
Cooper basin as reproduced in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Solar irradiance and temperature data near
Cooper Basin, Australia
Other parameters selected in this case study
include: 182 six-row heat exchanger bundles, 4000
kg/s water flow rate inside the heat exchanger, 120
m tower height, 15% efficiency of the geothermal
plant, 27oC ambient temperature at the design point,
and 450 m solar collector in diameter. The
comparison of the net power generated by this
geothermal power plant is shown in Figure 3 with
and without solar enhanced cooling system. In this
figure, NDDCT represents a conventional natural
draft dry cooling tower (NDDCT) without sunroof
being added.
Figure 3: Net power generation with (SENDDCT) and
without (NDDCT) solar enhanced system
Figure 3 shows the net power output decreasing
with increasing ambient temperatures no matter
which cooling system is used. However, the net
power reduction is less with solar enhancement
(SENDDCT) than without it (NDDCT) during the
hot periods of the day when the ambient
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temperature increases from 28.6oC at 8:00am to
36.7oC at 14:00 pm (reference Figure 2). The net
power suffers about 40% reduction with a
conventional natural draft cooling tower. It is also
seen a relative high solar irradiance from 12:00 to
14:00 pm and when this solar energy is used in
SENDDCT, about 3MW net power loss can be
avoid at 14:00pm.
It may be of interest to compare the extra power
generated by a geothermal power plant equipped
with SENDDCT against a solar chimney power
plant (SCPP) built at the same location using the
same size tower and the same solar collector area.
The comparison in this study is based on the
selection of solar collector diameter of 450m, tower
(chimney) height of 120m, and solar irradiance of
887w/m2.
Under these conditions, the SCPP can generate
about 113KW electricity that needs to be compared
against an extra 2.47 MW to be obtained from
SENDDCT. This indicates that, for this particular
case, the net electricity generated by a SENDDCT
is about 20 times higher than the output of the
SCPP. A cooling system is an integrated part of a
thermal power plant and the extra investment for
SENDDCT is for the solar collector only. For a
solar chimney power plant, the investment includes
not only the solar collector but also a tall chimney
and turbines.
4. DESIGN OPTIONS
The main SENDDCT design parameters include the
dimensions of tower, the heat exchanger area
(bundles), the sunroof diameter, and the
arrangement of the heat exchanger around the edge
of the sunroof.
Designing a cooling system for a particular power
plant, the height of the tower has a reverse
relationship with the area of heat exchangers, i.e., a
higher tower requires smaller area of heat
exchangers and vice versa. The trade-off between
the heat exchange area and tower height can be
optimized based on the minimum cost and the
optimizing procedures can be found in various
studies [9, 10].
Once the height of the tower and the area of the
heat exchangers are determined, selecting the right
diameters of the solar collectors and their
100
arrangement around the solar collectors become an
important issue in the design of SENDDCT.
Theoretically, increasing the solar collector size
will increase the heat rejection rate as shown in
Figure 4. However, bigger solar collector size does
not only increase the investment, but may also
affect the air flow through the heat exchangers.
Large sunroof diameters provide a larger space for
placing the heat exchangers and the frontal area of
the heat exchangers may not be large enough to
cover the entire outside perimeter of the solar
collector. In this case, parts of the sunroof perimeter
will need to be blocked and our 3-D numerical
model has confirmed that this blockage will have a
significant effect on the air flow and the SENDDCT
cooling performance. To maximize the utilization,
one design goal is to make the blocked area as small
as possible (or the heat exchange coverage area as
large as possible).
320
Heat rejection rate
315
310
(MW)
305
300
200 250 300 350 400 450 500
Solar collector diameter (m)
Figure 4: Relationship of solar collector size and heat
rejection rate
4.1. Option 1- fewer heat exchanger rows
For a fixed total heat exchange area used in a
SENDDCT, one way to increase the heat exchanger
coverage area is to use bundles with fewer tube
rows, e.g. 3-row instead of 6-row heat exchangers.
Using three rows instead of six would double the
heat exchanger coverage area. However, reducing
the number of bundles below three rows leads to
significantly lower heat transfer performance [11].
Therefore 3-row bundles were selected as the
minimum tube row number for the proposed
SENDDCT.
4.2. Option 2 – shorter heat exchanger tubes
The second design option is to use shorter heat
exchanger tubes. Since the bundles are vertically
 JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR SHELL AND SPATIAL STRUCTURES: J. IASS
Figure 5: Shorter heat exchanger increases the coverage area
placed, the corresponding inlet sunroof height will
be lower to match the height of the shorter heat
exchanger, which results in a smaller area for the
heat exchangers to cover. This arrangement is
shown in Figure 5. Figure 5a shows that the heat
changers can only cover half the area provided by
the sunroof when the heat exchanger is 15 m high
but the full coverage is achieved when the height of
heat exchanger is reduced to 7.5 m as shown in
Figure 5b.
A 3-D simulation was carried out for both 15 m
high heat exchanger and 7.5 m high heat exchanger
as shown in Figure 5. The heat rejection rates, Q,
and the air mass flow rates, Ma, were calculated for
both height of the heat exchanger [10]. The results
are shown in table 1 which indicates that using
shorter heat exchangers to achieve full coverage has
a negative effect on the cooling performance.
This is due to a lower sunroof results in a larger
pressure drop at the collector-to-tower transition
section and produces a negative impact on the
thermal performance of SENDDCT.
Table 1: Both heat rejection rate and mass flow rate are
reduced with shorter heat exchanger
15m high heat 7.5 m high heat
exchanger exchanger
Ma (kg/s) 18010 16522
Q (kW) 139929.8 137589.3
4.3. Option 3 – optimizing heat exchanger
coverage ratio
Since there is a limitation and negative effect on
selecting both heat exchanger row and shorter heat
exchanger tube, it seems that partial blockage in
SENDDCT is unavoidable with increased sunroof
diameter. The larger the sunroof diameter, the
smaller is the heat exchanger coverage ratio, i.e. the
ratio of the total heat exchanger frontal area to the
flow area available at the perimeter of the sunroof.
3-D simulations have been carried out by Zou [10]
for various coverage ratios in a SENDDCT. Six
coverage ratios were modeled in this study: 100%,
60%, 55%, 50%, 45% and 40%. For the heat
exchanger type selected, these coverage ratios relate
to sunroof diameters of 195 m (a), 325 m (b), 354.4
m (c), 390 m (d), 433.33 m (e) and 487.5 m (f),
respectively as shown in Figure 6.
When increasing the diameter of sunroof, the heat
rejection of the system increases linearly as
predicted by 1-D model. At the same time, with the
increase of sunroof diameter, the coverage rate of
the heat exchange decrease if the same heat
exchange area is kept unchanged and partial
blockage will be required.
How does the introduced blockage affect the
cooling performance of SENDDCT becomes an
important design issue. The heat rejection rate of
the SENDDCT obtained by 3-D numerical model is
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Figure 6: Various coverage ratios with different diameters of sunroof

plotted in Figure 7 when different sizes of solar

collector are selected resulting in different heat
exchanger coverage ratios. Even the 1-D model
predicted that the heat rejection rate increased
linearly with the increase of the diameter of
sunroof. However, when the diameter of the solar
collector increases to a limit in which the selected
heat exchanger can only cover 40% of the area
provided, there is a drop of the heat rejection rate.
This is caused by the blockage introduced. The 3-D
numerical of the air flow indicate that vortices are
generated at the back of heat exchangers below this
coverage ratio owing to the introduction of large Figure 7: Heat rejection and mass flow rates vs size of
partial blockage required to cover the rest of the solar collector
perimeter. These vortices reduce the effective heat
transfer area. These vortices cannot be detected by using the extra solar energy to enhance the cooling
1-D model as indicated in the Figure 7. Therefore, performance of a conventional natural draft dry
the maximum size of the solar collector can be used cooling tower to compensate for the net power
in a SENDDCT is to guarantee a heat exchanger losses at hot periods. Extra cooling enabled by the
coverage ratio of about 50%. Beyond that ratio, any solar enhancement has been shown to lead to a
increase of the sunroof diameter will generate no significant increase in power generation.
further gains.
The magnitude of the improvement increases with
5. CONCLUSIONS increased sunroof diameter. The sunroof diameter,
however, cannot be arbitrarily increased. The ratio
High ambient temperatures usually accompany of sunroof peripheral area covered by the heat
strong solar radiation intensity in renewable power exchangers to the total peripheral area cannot be
generation plants. This offers the opportunity of less than about 50%. Increasing the sunroof area

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will not produce a benefit if it causes the heat
exchanger coverage ratio to drop below this level.
Although the case study was based on the
geothermal power plants, the results are applicable
to solar thermal power plants with power blocks
designed for a fixed turbine inlet temperature not
influenced by the increased solar incidence.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was performed as part of the
Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative
(ASTRI), a project supported by Australian
Government.
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