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TOWER
Introduction:
When a gas does not dissolve in the liquid in contact, the mass transfer involves vaporization and
condensation of liquid phase. The equilibrium consideration and simultaneous heat transfer are
important in humidification, dehumidification, and cooling of gases, and very importantly
cooling of liquids.
Cooling towers are heat removal devices used to transfer process waste heat to the atmosphere.
Cooling towers uses the evaporation of water to remove process heat, and cool the working fluid
to near wet-bulb air temperature. Common applications include cooling the circulating water
used in oil refineries, chemical plants, power stations and central air conditioning of enclosed
space. The towers vary in size from roof-top units to vary large units.
Objective:
Theory:
(1)
Where and are enthalpy of gas-vapor mixture per kg. of dry air.
Q=G*( ) (2)
Where (3)
(4)
(5)
. (6)
This gives the overall mass transfer coefficient from the eqn
The theoretical evaporation rate depends on the humidity of the air and its temperature. It is
given as volume flow rate of humid air (V)/humid volume of air ( ) where
And V is the velocity of humid air times the cross section of the exit port.
Experimental Set-up:
The setup comprises of a cooling tower, a water heater to generate hot water at different
temperatures, a pump and rotameter to regulate water into the tower and a fan to introduce air
into the tower. The water is distributed into the upward moving air by nozzles. Thermometers are
provided to measured the temperature of the inlet and outlet water, as well as to note the dry bulb
and wet bulb temperature of the entering and exit air. A hot wire anemometer measures the air
flow rate.
Experimental Procedure:
Data Analysis:
Calculate the number and height of transfer unit, the overall mass transfer coefficient and the
theoretical evaporation rate for all the test runs.