Heat and Mass Transfer Evaluation and Exergy Analysis in the Counter Flow Wet Cooling Tower of Khuzestan Steel Company (KSC)

A thermodynamic analysis of the counter flow wet cooling tower (CWCT) in the Steelmaking unit of the Khuzestan Steel Company (KSC) is performed in this paper. We evaluated both energy and exergy formulations for analyzing heat and mass transfer, exergy and second-law efficiency in this cooling tower. The Lewis factor Lef is an indication of the relative rates of heat and mass transfer in an evaporative process. In many performance analyses of the cooling towers, Lef is assumed to be 1 in order to simplify the heat and mass transfer equations between air and water. If so, evaporative loss is negligible. Taking Lef into account complicates heat and mass transfer equations and their numerical solutions, despite this fact, in this paper, Lef is calculated for all parts of the tower in order to predict air and water conditions in the cooling tower more accurately.