Contribution to the Search for the Optimum Conditions for Reducing Water Loss in the Cooling Tower.

A mathematical formulation of the problem of finding the optimal size of water droplets and their initial velocity with restrictions on the cooled water temperature and water losses in the form of steam is given. In the case of free convection, such an optimization problem also becomes a boundary-value eigenvalue problem with a continuous spectrum, where the eigenvalue is the air flow at the cooling tower inlet. To free convection there corresponds the minimum flow value. The solutions are obtained for the initial temperature of the cooled water (70°C) sprayed in the tower with 1.8 kg·m–2·s–1. Attention is drawn to the difficulty of assessing the loss of water in the form of microscopic droplets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]