16-25: Wind Effects On Air Cooled Condensers: Insights From The Wind-Tunnel

Air-Cooled Condensers (ACCs) offer a way to significantly reduce U.S. water consumption but are susceptible to adverse wind conditions. An ongoing interdisciplinary research project is investigating the effects of wind on the thermal performance of ACCs with a field study of an existing full-scale combined cycle power plant, wind-tunnel study, and a high fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model. This presentation will focus on the insights provided by the wind tunnel study, and include limited comparisons with the other methods. Included in the modeling are the effect of some mitigation methods such as windscreens and solid walls.