Exergy analysis of wet cooling tower at various loads and ambient temperatures
This paper presents an exergy analysis of wet cooling tower at three different loads and in a range of the ambient temperatures. Increase in cooling tower load increases its exergy destruction and simultaneously decreases cooling tower exergy efficiency, while an increase in the ambient temperature causes a decrease in cooling tower exergy destruction and simultaneously decreases its exergy efficiency. The lowest cooling tower exergy destructions (between 1417.54 kW and 2925.65 kW) are obtained at low load. The highest cooling tower exergy efficiencies are calculated at the lowest observed ambient temperature of 5 °C – they amount 64.31 % at low load, 54.80 % at middle load and 53.94 % at high load. The change in ambient temperature for 5 °C resulted with a change in cooling tower exergy efficiency of 4 % or more on average.