03-06: Innate Recirculation of Cooling Towers

In today's power market there is an overall decrease in available plot area in which to build a power plant. For this reason larger projects are requiring more back-to-back cooling tower configurations. Previous CTI publications show that certain cooling tower configurations and designs are more responsible than others for creating recirculation environments, and indeed, back-to-back configurations create more recirculation than in-line. In-line and back-to-back counter-flow configurations makeup the bulk of new cooling tower installations. However, this report deals exclusively with back-to-back counter-flow cooling towers. It will also develop 1) the upper limit for design variables that create recirculation, and 2) answer which variables have a greater affect on the cooling towers' thermal performance, auxiliary power, and cost.