84-01: EPRI Research on Cooling Tower Performance

One of the primary goals of EPRI's Heat Waste and Water Management Program is to improve the ability of the utility industry to predict and test the performance of power plant cooling systems. The object of this work is to develop uniform methods that will aid the industry in specifying cooling systems, evaluating bids, performing retrofitting studies, and testing system thermal performance. Current work includes research on once-through systems, cooling ponds and lakes, and wet and dry cooling towers. This paper describes research on conventional evaporative cooling towers. The effort includes the construction of a laboratory-scale fill test facility and testing of promising counter flow and cross flow fill configurations for thermal and hydraulic performance at both laboratory scale and full scale.