Experimental study on the thermal performance of mechanical cooling tower with rotational splash type packing

This paper deals with an experimental investigation of thermal performance of a forced draft counter flow wet cooling tower filled with a rotational splash type packing. Tower’s parameters are compared when the packing has been rotated and when it does not rotate (like common existing towers). However, no references regarding the effect of the rotational packing on the cooling tower performance have been found in the reviewed bibliography. The packing has 0.85 m2 area and consists of six horizontal wooden slats fixed on a threaded metallic shaft. This investigation is carried out for three inlet air temperatures 27 °C, 34 °C and 41 °C while water temperature is kept constant at 45 °C. The ranges of packing velocities are between 0 to 17 RPM and also several ranges of water to air flow rate ratio are experimented: 0.4 < L/G < 2.8. The obtained results showed that thermal characteristics of the cooling tower are affected by packing’s rotation. The results show that rotational splash type packing with higher rotational velocity rejects more heat from water considerably.