Development of Modified Incompressible Ideal Gas Model for Natural Draft Cooling Tower Flow Simulation

CTU in Prague, FME, Department of Fluid Dynamics and Thermodynamics, Technická 4, 166 07 Prague, Czechia

^* e-mail: tomas.hyhlik@fs.cvut.cz

Published online: 4 June 2018

Abstract

The article deals with the development of incompressible ideal gas like model, which can be used as a part of mathematical model describing natural draft wet-cooling tower flow, heat and mass transfer. It is shown, based on the results of a complex mathematical model of natural draft wet-cooling tower flow, that behaviour of pressure, temperature and density is very similar to the case of hydrostatics of moist air, where heat and mass transfer in the fill zone must be taken into account. The behaviour inside the cooling tower is documented using density, pressure and temperature distributions. The proposed equation for the density is based on the same idea like the incompressible ideal gas model, which is only dependent on temperature, specific humidity and in this case on elevation. It is shown that normalized density difference of the density based on proposed model and density based on the nonsimplified model is in the order of 10^-4. The classical incompressible ideal gas model, Boussinesq model and generalised Boussinesq model are also tested. These models show deviation in percentages.