18-02: Efficient Water Use to Boost the Air-Cooled Condenser Performance

During hot ambient conditions, it is often desirable to boost the performance of an ACC (Air-Cooled Condenser) to avoid a steam turbine trip under full load conditions. A Simple way to accomplish this is to spray water into the ACC air inlet (evaporative cooling). But this approach has many drawbacks and does not work under certain operating conditions. A more efficient way is to use the water in a small wet section add-on. The water consumption and performance improvement of both ACC performance boosting methods will be compared and the advantages and disadvantages will be discussed.