Experimental study on the air flow field in the water collecting devices

This paper deals with the experimental analysis on the air flow field inside the different water collecting devices (WCDs). The wind tunnel experiment is first employed in the WCDs research. The resistance to the airflow caused by the WCDs is analyzed. The stability of the air flow field in the experimental model is studied. Coefficient of the ventilation uniformity is proposed to qualitatively reveal the airflow uniformity. Compared with the conventional natural draft wet cooling tower, the cooling performance of the cooling tower with WCDs can be enhanced due to the greater air mass flow rate caused by the Venturi effect of the WCDs. The air flow field in the WCDs with rectangular channel is the most turbulent, and this kind of WCDs is recommended not to be used in practical application. Preliminary study on the numerical simulation is conducted. The CFD models for both the scaled size WCDs and the real size WCDs are developed and validated in comparison to the experimental measurements. Studies in the paper indicate that the numerical analysis on the WCDs is feasible. These conclusions lay an experimental foundation for the numerical research on the air flow field inside the WCDs.

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