Jerry Hubble, Corporate Safety Manager at Mesa Associates, Inc., had his paper titled “The Orientated Spray Cooling System for Heat Rejection and Evaporation” published in the January 2022 issues of ASME Journal of Heat Transfer. The paper discusses how spray ponds offer significant advantages over mechanical draft cooling towers (MDCTs) including superior simplicity and operability, lower preferred power requirements, and lower capital and maintenance costs. Unlike a conventional spray pond in which spray nozzles are arranged in a flat bed and water is sprayed upward, the oriented spray cooling system (OSCS) is an evolutionary spray pond design in which nozzles are mounted on spray trees arranged in a circle and are tilted at an angle oriented toward the center of the circle. As a result, each nozzle is exposed to ambient air as water droplets drag air into the spray region while the warm air concentrated in the center of the circle rises. Both effects work together to increase air flow through the spray region. Increased air flow reduces the local wet-bulb temperature of the air in the spray pattern, promoting heat transfer and more efficient cooling. Hubble developed analytical models to predict the thermal performance of the OSCS that are based on classical heat and mass transfer and kinetic vector relationships for spherical water droplets that rely only on generic experimental thermal performance data. Therefore, the model is not limited in application regarding spray pressure or nozzle spacing or orientation and is not limited by droplet size considerations. The paper describes specific details such as nozzle type, orientation, and drop spectrum and details on the analytical model never published that are used to predict the OSCS performance. The paper compares the predicted performance of the OSCS with the rigorous full-scale field test results that were measured in compliance with Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements at the Columbia Generating Station where the ultimate heat sink (UHS) is two OSCS.
Jerry Hubble is a Professional Engineering with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace and Ocean Engineering from Virginia Tech and a Master of Sciences in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tennessee Space Institute.
About Mesa Associates, Inc.
Mesa is a woman/minority-owned full-service multi-discipline engineering, procurement, and construction management firm specializing in providing engineering services for the commercial, government, industrial, municipal, and electric utility industry. Mesa is currently providing over $180M of engineering services to 13 of the top 15 utilities across the United States. Our growth is a result of delivering quality projects and value to our clients with unparalleled customer service. We differentiate ourselves by saying we are Large Enough to Perform, Small Enough to Care.