Sharif Digital Repository

Thermal powerplants report a reduction in their dry cooling tower performances due to surrounding wind drafts. Therefore, it is very important to consider the influence of wind velocity in cooling tower design; especially in geographical points with high wind conditions. In this regard, we use the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool and simulate a dry cooling tower in different wind velocities of 0, 5 and 10 m/s. To extend our calculations; we also consider the temperature variation of circulating water through the tower heat exchanger or deltas one-by-one. We show that some heat exchangers around the tower cannot reduce the circulating water temperature sufficiently. This causes an... 

Past experiences have shown that a local wind can considerably affect the performances of powerplant cooling towers and factory chimneys. In thermal powerplants, the performance of Rankin cycles would reduce if the temperature of its condenser increases. This issue is very important to powerplants located in countries with strong local winds. To remedy the malperformance of a natural cooling tower in windy conditions, it is required to understand the physics of flow around cooling towers more clearly. One adverse physics is known as the wind covering problem which can drastically affect the natural draught through a cooling tower in windy conditions. In this paper, we focus on wind-covering... 

Increasing concerns about the lack of energy resources, global warming and environmental pollution have pushed the relevant organizations to develop energy saving strategies such as energy labeling programs. In this research, a new energy labeling program is developed and evaluated for the wet cooling towers in Iran. The cooling tower parameters, including its cooling capacity and the fan power consumption, are measured using an experimental setup. The experimental data are standardized to compensate the effect of the ambient wet bulb temperature on the cooling tower performance which cannot be controlled during the experiments. The results show that the cooling tower capacity and the fan... 

A steady-state equilibrium-stage model based on MESH equations was proposed to simulate saline extractive distillation columns. The interaction parameters between each component of water-CaCl 2 and ethanol-water were obtained from mean ionic activity coefficients and vapor-liquid equilibrium (VLE) experimental data. Additionally, the interaction coefficients for the ethanol-CaCl 2 pair were fitted to experimental VLE data which were reported by Nishi for the ethanol-water-CaCl 2 system. It should be noted that adjustable parameters between each pair were considered to be temperature dependent. The results confirmed that the proposed model could accurately predict the experimental... 

In this study, effect of desiccant wheel, heat exchanger and cooling coil will be evaluated on decreasing the wet bulb temperature of entering air to cooling tower and decreasing the outlet cold water temperature. For this purpose, change effect of desiccant wheel parameters will be investigated on wet bulb temperature of outlet air from heat exchanger. After that, optimum parameters and minimum wet bulb temperature will be selected. Then, outlet cold water temperature will be achieved for various cooling coil surface temperature with definition of by pass factor and also by using optimum desiccant wheel parameters and entrance air wet bulb temperature to tower related to cooling coil... 

Re-circulating cooling water systems offer the means to remove heat from a wide variety of industrial processes that generate excess heat. Such systems consist of a cooling tower and a heat-exchanger network that conventionally has a parallel configuration. However, reuse of water between different cooling duties allows cooling water networks to be designed in a series arrangement. This results in performance improvement and increased cooling tower capacity. In addition, by the integration of ozone treatment into the cooling tower, the cycle of concentration can be increased. The ozone treatment also dramatically reduces the blow-down that, in turn, is environmentally constructive. In this... 

This study deals with an experimental investigation on the thermal performance of a mechanical wet cooling tower with counter flow arrangement by using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) and nanoporous graphene nanofluids. Stable nanofluids were prepared through two-step procedure by using water with properties taken from a working cooling tower in the South of Iran. Zeta potential revealed suitable stability of MWNTs and nanoporous graphene nanofluids. Thermal and rheological properties of the nanofluids were investigated. It was found that thermal conductivity increases by 20% and 16% at 45°C for MWNTs and nanoporous graphene nanofluids, respectively. The increase in density and... 

The performance of the tower based concentrated solar thermal (CST-tower) plant is very sensitive to the operation strategy of the plant and the incident heat flux on the receiver. To date, most studies have been examined only the design mode characteristics of the cavity receivers, but this paper significantly expands the literature by considering non-design operating conditions of this important sub-component of the CST-tower plants. A feasible non-design operating conditions of the cavity receivers that was considered in this study is the storage mode of operation. Two practical dynamic control strategies were examined then to find the most efficient approach: fixed solar field mass... 

In multi-tower heliostat fields, although heliostats are capable of aiming at different receivers during the day, due to different orientations, neighboring heliostats might affect shading and blocking efficiency of each other reciprocally. In the proposed method of this paper, considering the mentioned effects and based on a group decision-making approach, each heliostat chooses the best receiver thus ensuring the highest possible instantaneous efficiency of the field. As a case study, this method is applied for the optimal design of a multi-tower field. Then, the field performance is simulated in a case where heliostats make decisions individually without considering the interactions.... 

Increasing concerns about global warming and environmental pollution control has pushed the relevant organizations to set regulations and to develop programs for energy saving. In addition, for many high energy using appliances, energy labeling provides the end user with important data to select energy-efficient equipments and encourage the manufacturers to enhance the performance of their productions. In this research, a new energy-saving program for wet cooling towers has been developed. Considering a thermo-hydraulic analysis, a novel Energy Index (IE) has been extracted which takes all aspects of the problem into account. The present index can be used as a proper criterion for energy... 

The suitability of two different pretreatment methods, i.e., coagulation-filtration and ultrafiltration (UF), and two final membrane treatment technologies, namely nanofiltration (NF) and reverse osmosis (RO), for desalination of a cooling tower blowdown (CTBD) was investigated. Particular attention was paid to ensuring that the best pretreatment method could enhance the permeate flux and lifespan of the NF and RO membranes and decrease the membranes' fouling characteristics. Furthermore, the difference of NF and RO performances in CTBD treatment was investigated. In order to find the most appropriate type of coagulant, coagulant dosage, pH and co-coagulant dosage, 21 jar tests were... 

Passive cooling systems such as wind towers or wind catchers can create thermal comfort for building residents in hot and dry regions. This paper introduces an experimental study of a modular design of wind tower called the modular wind tower with wetted surfaces. Air temperature, relative humidity (RH) and airflow velocity parameters were measured at different times and at points when the velocity of the ambient air was zero. The results show that the modular wind tower can decrease the air temperature by an average of 10 °C and increase the relative humidity of airflow in a building by approximately 36% on average. Additionally, the wind tower can create the airflow velocity entering the... 

Wind towers or wind catchers, as passive cooling systems, can provide natural ventilation in buildings located in hot, arid regions. These natural cooling systems can provide thermal comfort for the building inhabitants throughout the warm months. In this paper, a modular design of a wind tower is introduced. The design, called a modular wind tower with wetted surfaces, was investigated experimentally and analytically. To determine the performance of the wind tower, air temperature, relative humidity (RH) and air velocity were measured at different points. Measurements were carried out when the wind speed was zero. The experimental results were compared with the analytical ones. The results... 

The present study conducts a comprehensive comparative techno-economic analysis of some near-term sensible thermal energy storage (TES) alternatives to the ‘standard’ two-tank molten salt system for concentrated solar power (CSP) plants. As such, we conducted detailed, relative annual transient simulations for single-medium thermocline (SMT), dual-media thermocline (DMT), and shell-and-tube (ST) systems. To be consistent with recent literature, the DMT and ST systems use concrete with a porosity of 0.2 (e.g. where concrete occupies 80% of the system) as their low cost filler material. The systems were integrated into a validated 19.9 MWe Gemasolar CSP model, which has a solar multiple of... 

Self-adaptive systems are systems that automatically adapt in response to environmental and internal changes, such as possible failures and variations in resource availability. Such systems are often realized by a MAPE-K feedback loop, where Monitor, Analyze, Plan and Execute components have access to a runtime model of the system and environment which is kept in the Knowledge component. In order to provide guarantees on the correctness of a self-adaptive system at runtime, the MAPE-K feedback loop needs to be extended with assurance techniques. To address this issue, we propose a coordinated actor-based approach to build a reusable and scalable model@runtime for self-adaptive systems in the...