Numerical study on the performance of an air-cooled condenser cell under wind influence

User defined function (UDF) describing the condensation of the turbine exhaust was loaded to the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT, to simulate the heat transfer process between the ambient air and the steam. Fan boundary condition and porous medium model were applied to model the aerodynamics characteristic of the air-cooled condenser (ACC) cell. The influence of the wind speed on the fan flow rate was studied, and the change patterns of the wind speed and temperature on the heat transfer rate was analyzed. Finally, the performance of the ACC cell with wind wall was compared with the original cell. The result shows that the expanding negative pressure region with the increasing of the wind speed causes the decreasing of the fan flow rate and the heat transfer rate of the heat exchangers. The variable cold side inlet temperature of the heat exchangers determined by the wind temperature also results in a fluctuant heat transfer rate. Wind wall weakens the hot air recirculation, while the fan flow rate also drops, and the heat transfer rate almost has no change under the dual effects above. The influence patterns of the ambient wind on the ACC cell are the theoretical foundation for the study on the performance of the whole ACC.