Assessment of Mechanical Draft Cooling Tower Thermal Emissions from Visual Images of Plumes

Assessment of Mechanical Draft Cooling Tower Thermal Emissions from Visual Images of Plumes

Blog Article

Using a one-dimensional code, we computed the power (enthalpy discharge rate) of a twelve-cell mechanical draft cooling tower (MDCT) using over two hundred visible condensed water vapor plume volume measurements derived from images, weather data, and tower operating conditions.The plume images were simultaneously captured by multiple stationary digital cameras surrounding the cooling tower.An analysis Espresso Cups technique combining structure from motion (SfM), a neural-network-based image segmentation algorithm, and space carving was used to quantify the volumes.

Afterwards, the power output was computed using novel techniques in the one-dimensional code that included cooling tower exhaust plume adjacency effects implemented with a modified version of the entrainment function, weather data averaged from eleven stations, and fan operations at the times when plume volumes were measured.The Ferrule Crimper model was then compared with the averaged observed power output, and it validated well with an average error ranging from 6 to 12%, depending on the meteorological data used in the simulations.This methodology can possibly determine power plant fuel consumption rates by applying visible imagery.