COMPUTATIONAL INVESTIGATION OF HEAT-MASS EXCHANGE IN COOLING TOWERS EQUIPPED WITH JET-FILM CONTACT DEVICES
Increasing the unit capacity of industrial apparatuses leads to a decrease in water consumption. Today, organizing the rational use of water resources at industrial enterprises and the use of circulating water supply systems is of particular relevance. The developed design of a cooling tower sprinkler unit has a high phase contact surface, uniformity of their distribution over the cross section of the device, low hydraulic resistance, and minimal entrainment of liquid droplets. We have investigated heat and mass transfer on various surfaces of a jet-film contact device, namely on the vertical partition from the liquid film flowing down along it and inside the downpipe - on the free surface liquid. The graphs are presented that show the Nusselt number dependency on the downpipe wall height and on the real velocity of gas flow. It is found that the heat transfer of the liquid flowing down along the surfaces of partitions as a film is higher than that of the liquid inside the downpipe. Therefore, we are proposing to extend the area of the film interaction between the liquid and the gas and to use various methods of intensifying the convection heat transfer by means of textured, perforated, and corrugated surfaces. Energy efficiency of heat transfer on the surfaces under research was analyzed using V.I. Antufyev's criterion. Gas-phase mass-transfer coefficients were found based on the well-known Lewis analogy. The final design and operation characteristics of machines equipped with jet-film contact devices should be selected after having performed feasibility analysis, based on the specific production conditions of a recirculating cooling water system.