TP25-13 Creating an Indutry - Wide Fill

Over the many decades counterflow fill thermal performance testing has fallen under the purview of cooling tower manufacturers and select fill suppliers. Each either designing and building their own test facility or using facilities designed and built by technical universities or private testing firms with an interest in the technology. In any case, the test facilities were designed for a specific purpose, to test the fill in a variety of operating conditions, usually with a proprietary water distribution system and without regard to standardizing the so-called “end effects” (the thermal and pressure drop contribution of the nozzle spray zone above the fill under test and the droplet zone below the fill under test). When this information is published with the included end effects, it is impossible to make valid comparisons, from one set of performance curves to another due to the varying end effects of each test facility. This paper will set out to summarize the counterflow test facilities known to the authors used in the past and present, describe their similarities and differences, describe the methods of testing, including a standard method of data interpretation and propose a task group be established within the standing Performance and Technology Committee to begin the process of producing a counterflow fill thermal test standard. With such a standard in place, cooling tower and fill manufacturers and other interested third parties will be able to produce results that will allow valid comparisons between different fills.