On a numerical model of a natural draught wet-cooling tower

In this paper the numerical model of a natural draught wet-cooling tower is presented. The model encompasses the tower and the surrounding environment. The analysis was performed using a commercial CFD code. The most important region of the heat and mass transfer is the fill. The process of heat and mass transfer is described by four ordinary differential equations that are solved by an external program. An original method called the Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) has been applied to represent the heat and mass transfer in the fill. This technique allowed substantial reduction of computational time in the external program. The Euler-Euler model was used to calculate the multiphase flow in the rain zone. Results of the simulation are compared with data obtained experimentally and from other computational method. The comparison comprises a successful validation of the model.