Experimental and numerical analysis of solar enhanced natural draft dry cooling tower

Solar enhanced natural draft dry cooling tower(SENDDCT) is a new heat rejection device that uses solar energy to increase the cooling efficiency of natural draft dry cooling tower. In this paper, an experiment study was carried out t under natural conditions to investigate the effect of solar radiation intensity on the performance of SENDDCT. Meanwhile, a same-size CFD model was developed by using FLUENT to analyze the influence of ambient temperature on the cooling performance of SENDDCT. The results verified that SENNDCT can enhance heat transfer rate of natural draft dry cooling tower when ambient temperature was high at noon, solar radiation increased heat transfer rate by an average of 16.5% during the experiment. Air mass flow and heat transfer rate decreased with the increase of ambient temperature.