Cooling towers testing

Acceptance Testing Test procedures to determine the water cooling capacity of towers. Instrumentation used and measurement procedures should be those recommended by the Cooling Tower Institute (CTI) in its "Acceptant Text Procedures. "... 

A leak in another heat exchanger allowed flammable gas to enter a cooling-water return line. The gas was ignited by welding, which was being carried out on the cooling tower. The atmosphere had been tested before work started, five hours earlier (see Section 1.3.2). 

Additional detailed information is available from the Cooling Tower Institute, including ATF-105 Acceptance Test Procedure for Water-Cooling Towers, STD-101 CTI Grades of Redwood Lumber [31], STD-102 Structural Design Data [70], and TSC-302 Cooling Tower Wood Maintenance [16],... 

It is recommended that performance tests be specified and conducted in accordance with the Cooling Tower Institute procedure, as this gives the process engineer a standard of reference. Most cooling tower manufacturers are members of this Institute. 

Acceptance Test Procedure for Water-Gooling Towers, ATP-105, Cooling Tower Institute, Palo Alto, Calif. 

Some manufacturers of internal cooling tower components, specifically fill material and drift eliminators, have products produced from less easily ignited plastic that have been tested by a nationally recognized testing laboratory and determined to have sufficient fire resistance or reduced flame spread ratings that when, and only when, used in an otherwise noncombustible cooling tower, do not require fixed automatic fire protection. 

The fill material in natural draft cooling towers is frequently asbestos cement. Erosion of this fill material may result in the discharge of asbestos in cooling water blowdown. In a testing program for detection of asbestos fibers in the waters of 18 cooling systems, seven of the 18 sites... 

Further, steam and gas may escape into the atmosphere from wells undergoing tests, and from blow-out drillholes. Some gas may also escape in solution in the surplus condensate flowing from the cooling towers. 

Acceptance test procedure for water cooling towers of mechanical draft industrial type... 

At the time of completion of an installation, the water and air conditions and the loads may not be exactly the same as those of the design specification. Acceptance tests performed then must be analyzed to determine if the performance is equivalent to that under the design specifications. Such tests usually are performed in accordance with recommendations of the Cooling Tower Institute. 

A cooling tower has a cross-sectional area of 8000 ft2. The unit is designed to handle 1500 gpm of water from 112 to 92°F when the 5% wet-bulb temperature is 85°F. The air rate is 310,000 cfm. At full loadings, a test was run where it was observed that at a wet-bulb temperature of 70°F the water range was from 72 to 83°F. Determine whether the tower was fulfilling the conditions of the guarantee. 

Cooling tower characteristics can only be deduced from actual field tests. Tower characteristics are generally presented in the form of an empirical correlation. This correlation defines the relationship between the available... 

Design, supply all materials for delivery to site and supervise erection on prepared foundations, testing and commissioning one mechanical-induced draft cooling tower in accordance with the requirements of this requisition. 

The cooling tower manufacturer shall conduct the acceptance performance test and shall supply the necessary instruments to conduct the test in accordance with the requirements of the CTI Test Procedure ATP-105, latest revision. 

The cooling tower must be guaranteed to perform as specified herein when tested in accordance with the Cooling Tower Institute Acceptance Test Procedure ATP-105, latest revision. Should the... 

Corrosion detection plays an important role in any corrosion control program. Most of the methods employ nondestructive test methods and include hydrogen evaluation, radiography, dynamic pressure, corrosion probes, strain gauges and eddy current measurements. Of these, the methods employed in cooling tower practice are hydrogen evaluation and corrosion probes. 

Unfortunately, there are no commonly accepted standard procedures for securing reliable corrosion data. Any data collected from any test methods will have value only if they can be interpreted properly. Many corrosion environments can vary widely from day to day and even from hour to hour. Even slight variations in operating procedures can drastically affect the corrosion characteristics of the cooling tower. Therefore, it is important to establish methods on how the corrosion data are to be accumulated, evaluated and put to use. 

The authors briefly discuss some of the problems for air cooled heat exchangers and cooling towers using axial fans. The balance of the paper discusses ways to improve system efficiencies in three areas before the fan system design is finalized, improvements in the physical equipment as installed, and recognition of performance problems caused by adjacent equipment. Results of a full-scale test illustrating fan efficiency contributions of various components are given. 1 ref. cited. 

An important thermodynamic parameter in cooling tower calculations is the ratio of the thermal capacity of the water stream to that of the sir stream. This parameter is referred to as, the tower capacity factor. It is shown that when air or water efficiency, are plotted against the capacity factor test points for a given tower are found to lie on a single smooth curve. The correlation is obtained, irrespective of whether the equipment is used as a water cooler or air cooler, and irrespective of the temperature levels, temperature ranges and barometric pressures. The paper also shows that when a specified amount of heat has to be rejected into a specified air stream, optimum performance giving the lowest average water temperature is obtained when the water flow rate is chosen so that its thermal capacity is equal to the potential thermal capacity of the air stream. 13 refs, cited. 

Testing a Saltwater Cooling Tower Monjoie, Michael Sobel, Nelson... 

In 1974 the Atlantic City Electric Co. placed Unit 3 of its B L England Station into commercial operation. Condenser cooling for the unit is provided by circulating sea water in a closed-cycle, natural-draft system. The cooling tower selected for the site was a hyperbolic, counterflow unit. The thermal test instrumentation procedures and test data as well as drift measurement results are given. The paper indicates that the tower operates within design specifications for thermal performance and that it meets the environmental criteria regarding the drift. 

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