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Design of Solar Enhanced Natural Draft Dry Cooling Tower For Solar Thermal Power Plants
Design of Solar Enhanced Natural Draft Dry Cooling Tower For Solar Thermal Power Plants
Design of Solar Enhanced Natural Draft Dry Cooling Tower For Solar Thermal Power Plants
IASS
Editor’s Note: Manuscript submitted 6 January 2015; revision received 19 January 2016; accepted 12 March. This
paper is open for written discussion, which should be submitted to the IASS Secretariat no later than September 2016.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.20898/j.iass.2016.187.763
ABSTRACT
For concentrated solar thermal (CST) power plants located in dry and arid areas, dry cooling is the only cost
effective alternative. If using existing dry cooling technology, the CST power generation will be reduced
significantly at high ambient temperatures. This paper presents design options of a novel cooling tower design
concept with the potential to maintain the design-point performance even on very hot days. In this new concept,
a natural draft dry cooling tower is modified by adding a solar collector around its base. The function of the
solar collector is to make the air inside the cooling tower hotter so the buoyancy force increases. In a natural
draft dry cooling tower, increased buoyancy means increased air flow rate through the heat exchangers and,
therefore, increased heat transfer capacity. The end result is power plant efficiencies significantly higher than
what could be achieved with the unmodified design.
Keywords: Solar power, natural draft cooling tower, heat exchanger, dry cooling
efficiency is maximized when the plant operates not have an influence on the power conversion
between highest possible heat source temperature efficiency. This assumption is made to isolate the
and the lowest possible heat sink temperature. An benefits of solar enhancement on the cooling tower
enhanced cooling system can provides the lowest from the benefits that will be achieved by higher
possible heat sink temperature to improve the temperature in the solar heat collection for the
power plant efficiency. power block. An actual CST plant power block may
be constructed to make use of the higher solar field
Water is the preferred medium for power plant temperatures by increasing the turbine inlet
cooling but its availability may be limited by policy temperature. This would be a further help to the
or cost in arid remote areas, where many future power plant in maintaining its design point
CST plants are likely to be located. The condenser performance.
cooling amounts to over 90% of water consumption
in a typical wet-cooled CST power plant [4]. Dry
2. CONFIGURATION OF SENDDCT
cooling of such plants in arid remote areas may be
the only cost-effective option.
Natural draft cooling towers function according to
While dry cooling helps water conservation and the simple principle of the stack effect. Since warm
environmental protection, dry-cooled power plants air inside the tower is less dense than the ambient
suffer lower efficiencies when the ambient air air outside the tower, warm air rises due to
temperature is high [5]. Therefore, CST plants buoyancy and a natural circulation occurs. The
using dry cooling will suffer the same way. High driving force for the natural circulation of air is
ambient temperatures usually coincide with peak proportional to the difference in air density between
system demand and higher electricity sale prices. the inside and outside of tower and the tower
Thus, an increase in power production using height. It has been proposed by the authors that
enhanced cooling system to address high ambient solar energy can be used to heat the air inside a
temperature offers an opportunity to increase the natural draft dry cooling tower to increase the
revenue. High ambient temperatures usually density difference.
accompany high solar incidence. This offers an
opportunity of using the solar heat to enhance the The proposed configuration of solar enhanced
conventional natural draft dry cooling tower natural daft dry cooling tower (SENDDCT) is
performance. Thereby, the design-point cooling shown in Figure 1 [6]. The major components in
performance can be maintained even on hot days. this SENDDCT include a cooling tower, solar
To realise this opportunity, a solar enhanced natural collectors, and heat exchangers. The solar collectors
draft dry cooling tower (SENDDCT) has been are arranged radially around the base of the cooling
introduced by the Queensland Geothermal Energy tower forming a canopy or a sunroof. The heat
Centre of Excellence (QGECE) of the University of exchangers are placed vertically at the perimeter of
Queensland. the sunroof. As the air passes through the heat
exchangers, it is first heated by the hot fluid inside
The proposed solar enhanced natural draft dry the heat exchangers and then flows under the
cooling tower (SENDDCT) makes use of the solar sunroof. As the Sun heats the sunroof, the air
heat to enhance the performance of a conventional underneath the roof gains more heat on its way to
natural draft dry cooling tower. Various design the tower. The hotter air inside the cooling tower
options have been studied using 3-D numerical rises much faster. This results in more ambient air
modelling and an optimized SENDDCT being sucked in, i.e. more cool air through the heat
configuration is presented in this paper. The exchanger bundles. By this arrangement, it would
analysis presented in this paper was performed for a enhance the performance of a natural draft dry
geothermal plant rather than a CST plant based on cooling tower by compensating for high ambient
the factor that the hot source in a geothermal power temperatures by high air flow rates.
plant is not affected by the solar incidence. In
applying these results to a CST plant, it should be The proposed system would exploit the solar energy
recognized the direct application is valid only when during the hottest periods at which the conventional
the power block is designed for a fixed turbine inlet dry cooling tower would suffer the lowest
temperature and the increased solar incidence does performance.
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In Zou et al study, a 50-MWe geothermal power Figure 3 shows the net power output decreasing
plant proposed for Cooper Basin, Australia was with increasing ambient temperatures no matter
used as a case study to demonstrate the improved which cooling system is used. However, the net
performance of the proposed SENDDCT. The power reduction is less with solar enhancement
global and direct hourly solar irradiance and (SENDDCT) than without it (NDDCT) during the
average air hourly temperature records from Lee et hot periods of the day when the ambient
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temperature increases from 28.6oC at 8:00am to arrangement around the solar collectors become an
36.7oC at 14:00 pm (reference Figure 2). The net important issue in the design of SENDDCT.
power suffers about 40% reduction with a
conventional natural draft cooling tower. It is also Theoretically, increasing the solar collector size
seen a relative high solar irradiance from 12:00 to will increase the heat rejection rate as shown in
14:00 pm and when this solar energy is used in Figure 4. However, bigger solar collector size does
SENDDCT, about 3MW net power loss can be not only increase the investment, but may also
avoid at 14:00pm. affect the air flow through the heat exchangers.
Large sunroof diameters provide a larger space for
It may be of interest to compare the extra power placing the heat exchangers and the frontal area of
generated by a geothermal power plant equipped the heat exchangers may not be large enough to
with SENDDCT against a solar chimney power cover the entire outside perimeter of the solar
plant (SCPP) built at the same location using the collector. In this case, parts of the sunroof perimeter
same size tower and the same solar collector area. will need to be blocked and our 3-D numerical
The comparison in this study is based on the model has confirmed that this blockage will have a
selection of solar collector diameter of 450m, tower significant effect on the air flow and the SENDDCT
(chimney) height of 120m, and solar irradiance of cooling performance. To maximize the utilization,
887w/m2. one design goal is to make the blocked area as small
as possible (or the heat exchange coverage area as
Under these conditions, the SCPP can generate large as possible).
about 113KW electricity that needs to be compared
against an extra 2.47 MW to be obtained from 320
SENDDCT. This indicates that, for this particular
Heat rejection rate
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placed, the corresponding inlet sunroof height will 4.3. Option 3 – optimizing heat exchanger
be lower to match the height of the shorter heat coverage ratio
exchanger, which results in a smaller area for the
heat exchangers to cover. This arrangement is Since there is a limitation and negative effect on
shown in Figure 5. Figure 5a shows that the heat selecting both heat exchanger row and shorter heat
changers can only cover half the area provided by exchanger tube, it seems that partial blockage in
the sunroof when the heat exchanger is 15 m high SENDDCT is unavoidable with increased sunroof
but the full coverage is achieved when the height of diameter. The larger the sunroof diameter, the
heat exchanger is reduced to 7.5 m as shown in smaller is the heat exchanger coverage ratio, i.e. the
Figure 5b. ratio of the total heat exchanger frontal area to the
flow area available at the perimeter of the sunroof.
A 3-D simulation was carried out for both 15 m 3-D simulations have been carried out by Zou [10]
high heat exchanger and 7.5 m high heat exchanger for various coverage ratios in a SENDDCT. Six
as shown in Figure 5. The heat rejection rates, Q, coverage ratios were modeled in this study: 100%,
and the air mass flow rates, Ma, were calculated for 60%, 55%, 50%, 45% and 40%. For the heat
both height of the heat exchanger [10]. The results exchanger type selected, these coverage ratios relate
are shown in table 1 which indicates that using to sunroof diameters of 195 m (a), 325 m (b), 354.4
shorter heat exchangers to achieve full coverage has m (c), 390 m (d), 433.33 m (e) and 487.5 m (f),
a negative effect on the cooling performance. respectively as shown in Figure 6.
This is due to a lower sunroof results in a larger When increasing the diameter of sunroof, the heat
pressure drop at the collector-to-tower transition rejection of the system increases linearly as
section and produces a negative impact on the predicted by 1-D model. At the same time, with the
thermal performance of SENDDCT. increase of sunroof diameter, the coverage rate of
the heat exchange decrease if the same heat
Table 1: Both heat rejection rate and mass flow rate are exchange area is kept unchanged and partial
reduced with shorter heat exchanger blockage will be required.
15m high heat 7.5 m high heat How does the introduced blockage affect the
exchanger exchanger cooling performance of SENDDCT becomes an
Ma (kg/s) 18010 16522 important design issue. The heat rejection rate of
Q (kW) 139929.8 137589.3 the SENDDCT obtained by 3-D numerical model is
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will not produce a benefit if it causes the heat [5] Kröger, D. G., Air-cooled heat exchangers
exchanger coverage ratio to drop below this level. and cooling towers, PennWell, 2004.
Although the case study was based on the [6] Zou, Z., Guan, Z., Gurgenci, H. and Lu, Y.,
geothermal power plants, the results are applicable Solar enhanced natural draft dry cooling
to solar thermal power plants with power blocks tower for geothermal power applications,
designed for a fixed turbine inlet temperature not Solar energy, Vol. 86, Issue 9, 2012, pp.
influenced by the increased solar incidence. 2686–2694.
[DOI: 10.1016/j.solener.2012.06.003]
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
[7] Lee, T. R., Oppenheim, D. and Williamson,
This research was performed as part of the T. J., Australian solar radiation data
Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative handbook, Energy Research and
(ASTRI), a project supported by Australian Development Corporation, 1995.
Government.
[8] Australian Bureau of Meteorology,
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