Numerical investigation of hot air recirculation in an air-cooled steam condenser under ambient conditions

Air-cooled steam condensers (ACSCs) have been extensively utilized to reject heat in modern power plant. Hot air recirculation, which implies that the heated air from the exchangers is again drawn back into the axial fans influence the performance of the ACSC. Hot air recirculation under different wind speeds and directions is numerically simulated in an ACSC of a 2×600MW air-cooled power plant with the commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT, and the performance of the ACSC is investigated. Fan boundary is applied to simulate the fan characteristics when the ambient air flows through the rotor and the source term is added to the Navier-Stokes equation to simulate the pressure loss when the air flows through the exchangers. Phase transition is involved in the simulation because the turbine exhaust condensates in the finned tube exchangers while the ambient air flows outside. As a result, user define function based on the actual steam property is applied to simulate the heat transfer course between the exhaust and the ambient air. Two different mechanisms of hot air are simulated: one is based on wind speed and the other is based on wind direction. The simulation result shows that when the wind blows in the front of the ACSC, the hot air from the heat exchanger flow out free at low wind speed while it flows into the fan in the A-frame, and reverse irrigation occurs. Recirculation rate reaches its peak value at α=135° under the obstacle effect of the turbine and boiler houses. The hot air recirculation under ambient conditions is systematically studied in the paper, and the research results provide the reference for the design and operation of the power plant.