THE IMPACT OF AIR COOLED CONDENSERS ON （空气冷却式冷凝器的影响）.pdf

THE IMPACT OF AIR COOLED CONDENSERS ON PLANT DESIGN AND OPERATIONS Richard E. Putman Dirk Jaresch Technical Director Managing Director Conco Consulting Corp. J W GmbH Verona, PA 15147 Bochum, Germany Abstract Air-cooled condensers were first introduced into the U.S. power industry in the early 1970’s, but only during the last decade has the number of installations greatly increased, largely in response to the growing attention being paid to environmental concerns. The rising importance of this rather different technology for the condensing and recovery of exhaust steam calls for a broader understanding of the associated design and application principles involved, as well as of the performance monitoring techniques and cleaning methods that have to be applied. This paper identifies the basic configurations of air-cooled condensers used in the power industry together with their advantages and disadvantages when compared to those exhibited by traditional steam surface condensers. The several factors that affect the performance of air- cooled condensers are described in detail, especially the consequences that result from the fouling of the finned-tubes. Measuring the performance of air-cooled condensers is, clearly, an important task and some methods are identified, alternative ways of presenting the data also being included. To rectify the degradations in performance that result from external tube fouling, a number of cleaning procedures are described. Included among these are details of a new automated cleaning technology that has been successfully applied, and some significant performance improvements that have resulted from the use of this technique are documented. Keywords: Air-cooled Condensers, Dry Cooling, Performance Mo