Influence mechanism on flow and heat transfer characteristics for air-cooled steam condenser cells

Air-cooled steam condensers (ACSCs) have been extensively utilized to reject waste heat in power industry to save water resources. However, ACSC performance is so sensitive to ambient wind that almost all the air-cooled power plants in China are less efficient compared to design conditions. It is shown from previous research that the influence of ambient wind on the cell performance differs from its location in the condenser. As a result, a numerical model including two identical ACSC cells are established, and the different influence on the performance of the cells is demonstrated and analyzed through the computational fluid dynamics method. Despite the great influence from the wind speeds, similar cell performance is obtained for the two cells under both windless and wind speed conditions when the wind parallels to the steam duct. Fan volumetric effectiveness which characterizes the fan performance, as well as the exchanger heat transfer rate, drops obviously with the increasing wind speed, and performance difference between the exchanger pair in the same A-frame also rises continuously. Furthermore, different flow and heat transfer characteristics of the windward and leeward cell are obtained at different wind angles, and ambient wind enhances the performance of the leeward cell, while that of the windward one changes little.