Square array of air-cooled condensers to improve thermo-flow performances under windy conditions

The thermo-flow performances of air-cooled condensers (ACCs) get deteriorated severely under windy conditions for the inherent defects of rectangular array of condenser cells. In this work, a square array of ACCs is proposed to restrain the unfavorable effects of ambient winds. By means of CFD methods and experimental validation, the air variable fields, mass flow rates and total heat rejections of the ACCs with two types of arrays at different wind speeds and directions are obtained and analyzed. The results show that the reverse flow in the upwind condenser cells and hot plume recirculation of the peripheral condenser cells are both weakened for the proposed square array under windy conditions. Accordingly, the mass flow rate and total heat rejection increase a lot especially in the wind direction of −90° with a heat rejection improvement of 25.21% at the wind speed of 16 m/s, showing that the thermo-flow performances of ACCs get improved thanks to the square array of ACCs. In the absence of ambient winds, the total heat rejection of ACCs in the square array is almost the same as the conventional array.