PERFORMANCE CORRELATIONS FOR COUNTERFLOW COOLING TOWER
Keywords:
Counterflow cooling tower, Merkel theory, NTU, correlationAbstract
The determination of outlet water temperature from a counterflow cooling tower when the tower NTU and inlet fluids conditions are known often involves a trial-and-error, iterative type of calculation. The standard Merkel’s theory has been used to predict tower outlet water temperatures for a range of values of independent variables: inlet water temperature, inlet air specific enthalpy, ratio of water to air mass flow rate and NTU. The results are used to develop correlations between outlet water temperature and the independent variables using multiple linear regression analysis. The simple correlations have errors that are lower than 2%. The predicted tower outlet water temperatures are within  0.65oC of those obtained from Merkel analysis.References
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