Experimental study on water spray uniformity in an evaporative condenser of a water chiller

This study aims to investigate the water spray uniformity and collection ratio of sprinkler in an evaporative condenser of a water chiller. Experiments of water droplet distribution are conducted with 50 water collectors during the tests. Three different combinations of nozzle opening length and width were tested with the flow rates varied at 135 LPM and 176.4 LPM. Measured results show that the cross-sectional area of nozzle opening and flow rate significantly affect the water spray uniformity. In this work, at high flow rate, the Nozzle 2 with opening of 4»cm in length and 1»cm in width has better water spray uniformity compared to the nozzle 1 with opening of 4»cm in length and 0.7»cm in width. On the other hand, at low flow rate, the Nozzle 1 provides better impacting effect with the nozzle spacing of 17»cm, yet the Nozzle 2 performed better with the nozzle spacing of 15»cm. The latter case, with the smaller nozzle spacing and bigger nozzle opening size, led to a shorter impact distance of the spraying flow from two facing nozzles. Subsequently the spattering of water droplets was more pronounced, and distributed more uniformly.