DEVELOPMENT OF PERFORMANCE MODEL FOR INDUSTRIAL MECHANICAL COUNTER FLOW COOLING TOWER

Dagde, K. K., Piagbo, B.K., Emamoke, C

Department of Chemical/Petrochemical Engineering

Rivers State University of Science and Technology, Port Harcourt

ABSTRACTS

A performance model of an industrial cooling tower has been developed. The cooling tower performance model was developed from first principle by taking mass and energy balance on the water entering the cooling tower and the air leaving the cooling tower. The system of ordinary differential equations arrived at were solved using the forth order Runge Kutta algorithm adapted to a Visual Basic 6.0 program compiler. The results obtained were validated using plant data obtained from the Port Harcourt Refining Company of Nigeria. The results match plant data with a deviation of 2% for the cooling water outlet temperature, and 1.4% deviation for the outlet wet bulb temperature. Simulation results show that for the proper functioning of the cooling tower, the water-to-air loading ratio should be greater than unity, so that there will be sufficient air to extract the heat from the water.

Keywords: Modelling, Counter-Flow, Industrial Cooling Tower, Wet bulb Temperature