Discovery Early Career Researcher Award - Grant ID: DE190101253
Funder
Australian Research Council
Funding Amount
$396,000.00
Summary
Artificial tornados enhance updraft in natural draft cooling towers. This project aims to investigate and develop a novel air flow enhancement concept, induced plume swirl, and its engineering approaches to boost the cooling capacity of natural draft cooling towers (NDCTs). These towers are widely used in thermal power plants due to their low operating costs. The project will explore why and how the artificial natural convective air swirls (vortices) significantly increase the updraft inside NDC ....Artificial tornados enhance updraft in natural draft cooling towers. This project aims to investigate and develop a novel air flow enhancement concept, induced plume swirl, and its engineering approaches to boost the cooling capacity of natural draft cooling towers (NDCTs). These towers are widely used in thermal power plants due to their low operating costs. The project will explore why and how the artificial natural convective air swirls (vortices) significantly increase the updraft inside NDCTs and identify effective, low-energy cost swirl inducement methods to increase the efficiency of operation. A wide application of this technology will result in economic and environmental benefits, including increases in overall energy conversion efficiencies, cuts in operational costs in the order of billions, and reductions in carbon emissions in the thermal power sector.Read moreRead less
A novel air-cooled fuel cell system. This project presents a novel cooling technology for fuel cell systems. This new design will not only save up to 50 per cent of the material cost but also leads to 20 per cent less fuel consumption compared to the existing fuel cells. This can save us billions of dollars per year with profound impact on our nation's carbon-emission-free alternative energy sources.