Abstract
Crosswind has an adverse impact on the performance of an indirect dry cooling system. In order to mitigate the adverse influence, this study redistributed the circulating cooling water among air-cooled heat exchanger sectors so that the performance of the indirect dry cooling system could be improved. An evolution strategies algorithm combined with numerical effectiveness-based heat exchanger model was established to minimize the operation costs of the whole system. Based on a 660 MW practical power plant, optimal circulating cooling water operation strategies under varied crosswind speeds and ambient temperatures were calculated to show its application. According to the calculated results, the performance of the indirect dry cooling system could be enhanced by optimizing circulating cooling water distribution under any crosswind speed, especially under high ambient wind speeds. There is a slight promotion of the coal savings with a rise in ambient temperature: improvements of about 5%. The standard coal consumption rate could save as much as 2.50 g/kWh under crosswind speed of 10 m s−1 and ambient temperature of 32 °C, compared to the 0.1 g/kWh under crosswind speed of 2 m s−1 and ambient temperature of 32 °C.