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A temperature control system for water cooling towers based on variable

speed drives

Conference Paper · June 2008

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 A Temperature Control System for Water Cooling Towers
Based on Variable Speed Drives
NICOLAE MUNTEAN1, CONSTANTIN VOLOŞENCU2, ALEXANDRU HEDEŞ3
1,3
Department of Electrical Engineering, 2Department of Automatics an Applied Informatics
“Politehnica” University of Timişoara
Bd. V. Parvan nr. 2, 300223
ROMANIA
1 2 3
nicolae@lselinux.utt.ro, constantin.volosencu@aut.upt.ro, alexhedes@yahoo.com

Abstract: - This paper presents an industrial implemented technical solution to increase the efficiency of
electrical energy utilization in the chemical industry, by using frequency converters for automatic control of
water cooling tower fans, based on a feedback from the water temperature from the cooling circuit. There is
presented a practical application and the energy savings resulted on an installation for water re-circulation. The
technical solution leads to an increase of the electric energy efficiency in chemical industry by using frequency
converters to control speed and torque of cooling water fans equipped with squirrel cage motors, controlled
from a water temperature location in cooling water circuit.

Key-Words: - Temperature control systems, variable speed electrical drives, water cooling process.

1 Introduction means, using: outlet dampers, or inlet guide vanes,

The increase of energy efficiency in industry, next to
row material reducing, are important ways to reduce
product’s costs. Management of energy usage
assures a larger productivity with the same energy
consumption. The most comprehensive concept
related to electric energy utilization is that of
demand-side management (DSM), [1]. DSM provide
a range of technical, organisational and behavioral
solutions oriented to cut or to decrease electricity
consumtion and demand. Thus, DSM programs
consist of planning, implementing and monitoring
activities concerning electric utilties that are
designed to encourage consumers to modify their
level and pattern of electricity usage, [1]. There are
some typical steps to implement with good results an
energy management system, such as: identification
of situation in which an energy consumption
reducing is necessary, to apply the technical
adequate measures to the process, to design a
technical solution, the evaluate the needs, to
implement the solution, to evaluate the results. In
many idustrial processes, cooling towers play a
major role in the process development. A cooling
tower is a counter-flow or cross-flow heat exchanger
that removes heat from water by transferring it to
air. A straight method to reduce the fan motor
absorbed power is to control the air flow. Air flow
controlling for fans is accomplished by various
variable pitch fans, eddy-current couplings, or
variable speed drives (VSDs). Thus, cooling towers
can be a good application for VSDs. The using of
variable electrical drives has the following
advantages: maximization of the enery savings, the
possibility of closed control of leaving water
temperature, soft starts of the motor and fan that
reduce the stress of the fan drive system, built-in
diagnostic and control capabilities.
There are a lot of previous works focussed on the
applications of VSDs in water temperature control
of cooling towers, especially in the field of HVAC
applications. In [2] is presented an evaluation of the
economics of alternative cooling tower capacity
control methods. The results show that the potential
savings are not strongly dependent of the approach
temperature, but are dependent on the range in
colder climates. In [3], there are presented analytical
method, simulations and measured results, for single
fan and dual-duct constant air volume system and
variable speed fan systems.
The goal of this paper is to present a control
system designed for water-cooling tower, based on
performing electrical power drive. The electrical
drive was designed to control the water-cooling
process in four water cooling towers, equipped with
four fans, each unit being driven by four
asynchronous electrical motors of 110 KW.
2 The Control System
2.1 The Controlled Process
A simplified picture of the controlled process
consisting in water cooling towers is presented in
Fig. 1. The application is to drive the fans of four
Fig. 1. The process of water cooling in the recycling instalation.
The water collecting tank, is common to all four
towers, and is placed at the bottom of the towers.
Each cell has a fan with 5 propellers, with a
diameter of 8 m. The operation at 165 rpm, assures
an air flow of 400 m3/s, by means of a gear with an
electrical asynchronous motors of 110 kW at 1480
rpm. The thermal load is 10-30 Gcal related to the
chemical plant production capacity. Related to
season, to ambient air temperature, and
atmospheric conditions, the water is cooled with
variable fan speed. The reference temperature is
around 24 oC. Temperature variations of the
entering air in the cooling tower have direct
influences over the leaving water temperature. To
achieve optimum control of leaving water
temperature, the temperature sensor must be
installed in the collecting tank, or in the return line
of the cold water. Using internal PID controller, the
VSD operates in closed loop control and will run
the driven fan at whatever speed/flow is required in
order to maintain the leaving water temperature at
the designed point.
Since a cooling tower operates as a heat
exchanger, the physical background of the process
is related of heat transfer. Temperature control in
industrial installations is confronting with dynamic
characteristic computation of the process, due to
difficulties of a large variations, of the nonlinear
water-cooling towers for forced water-cooling, with
water flow of 1200 m3/h each of them. Two motors
are driven with adjustable speed, by means of two
VSDs, and the others two are driven with fixed
speed, being fed directly from the mains.
distribution of the temperature on the surface and in
the interior of the installation, which are not well
defined, being impossible to express
mathematically the phenomena that describe the
process. The heat transfer from the liquid to the air
is a process with a high inertia. Related to the
installation volume and the input flow, the duration
of the transient regime on the channel air flow –
thermal agent temperature – water temperature is
over 15 minutes. The cooling installation is not
thermal isolated from the environment, to allow a
more rapid heat transfer. In the analysis some
simplifying assumptions are made, [4-6]:
- the heat loss to the exterior is neglected;
- the fraction of incoming water that is
evaporated is neglected;
- the heat stored in the reservoir isolation is
neglected;
- the hot water has a uniform temperature.
In these conditions, the dynamics of the process
is described based on the equation of a thermal
equilibrium:
Qint = Qstored + Qext (1)
where Qint is the heat introduced in the process,
Qstored is the heat stored in the process and Qext is
the evacuated heat from the process and with
details:

q ⋅ dt + qi ⋅ dt = C ⋅ dθ + qe ⋅ dt
 the unit automatically compensate for changes in
 qi = cw ⋅θ i ⋅ F (2)
 qe = cw ⋅θ e ⋅ F
 individually adjusted to this particular system using
where q – the air heat flow; qi,θi – the heat flow of
the entering hot water and its temperature; qe,θe -
the heat flow of the leaving cold water and its
temperature; C = Mca – thermal capacity of the air; θ
– air temperature; cw – water specific heat; F – water
flow; M – air mass. According to the fact that θ = θe
the following relationship may be written:
M dθ q
+θ = + θi (3)
cw ⋅ F dt cw ⋅ F
So, the process is described by a first order
differential equation, with the time constant, [4-6]:
M
Tp = (4)
cw ⋅ F
2.2 The Control Principle
The controlled process is a heat exchanger, with a
tubular form, in which there are a mixture of the
warm fluid – the water to be cooled, with the cold
fluid – the air from the environment. The thermal
agent - the cooling air, and the hot water are in the
same time separated by the separating walls and
also they are circulating together. A particular
condition to describe the process by a mathematical
model with lumped parameters is to consider the
temperature as a constant. Actually, the process is a
process with distributed parameters, described by
equations with partial derivatives. The dimension
of the process is large and it involves a high
volume of water and air. The basic aspect in the
temperature control is to place the temperature
sensor so it could transmits the best possible
information, with a smallest possible delay time. In
this case, the control of the caloric level which
influences the heat change is currently achieved by
maintaining the temperature as a set point.
There are three basic types of controllers: on-
off, proportional and PID. Depending upon the
system to be controlled, the operator will be able to
use one type or the other to control the process. In
this paper are presented the advantages of a PI
temperature control, based on a variable electrical
drive. This controller combines proportional
control with an additional adjustment, which helps
the system. The proportional and integral terms are
trial and error. It provides an accurate and stable
control. The controller compensates automatically
the amount of energy available or the mass to be
controlled.
The block diagram showing the temperature
control principle is illustrated in Fig. 2.
Fig. 2. The temperature control system block
diagram.
The control system consists in the water
cooling process, the motor fan FM, fed by the
power frequency converter CONV. The fan speed
is controlled in a inner loop with a PI speed
controller SC, based on the error between the speed
reference Ω* and the measured speed Ωm, taken
from a speed sensor ΩS. The temperature is
controlled in an external loop, with a PI
temperature controller TC, based on the
temperature error as difference between the
reference temperature θ* and the measured
temperature θm, taken by a temperature sensor TS.
3 Modeling and Simulation
3.1. System Model
To model and simulate the temperature control
system from Fig. 2, a Simulink model was built.
The Simulink model is presented in Fig. 3.
The water basin has the transfer function:
H RB ( s ) = e − sTm (5)
The motor fan has the transfer function:
K MF
H MF ( s ) = (6)
TMF s + 1
 Fig. 3. The Simulink block diagram.
The temperature controller has the transfer
function:
1
H TC ( s ) = K TC (1 +
TTC s
) (7)
The variation of temperature is given by the
relationships (1-4). A feedback upon temperature θ
is made. The temperature and speed controllers
have internal antiwindup reactions.
3.2. Transient Characteristics
Two characteristics of the temperature, for two
ambient temperatures, obtained by simulations are
presented in Fig. 4.
Fig. 4. Temperature characteristics.
The initial temperature θ0 considered in
simulation was around 35 oC. To assure the
difference ∆θ=θref-θ, for decreasing the
temperature of the water from the accumulation
basin when the ventilation air is increased.
The ambient temperature has an important
influence in temperature control characteristics.
This influence is presented in Fig. 4, for two
different values θa1=35 oC and θa2=16 oC. For a
greater value of the ambient air temperature, the
extraction of the heat quantity is slower and the
water temperature in the water collecting tank
decreases slower.
4 Industrial implementation
4.1. Equipment
The principle scheme of the equipment is
presented in Fig. 5. There are two equipments,
each of them being able to control two motors
rated at 110 kW. One motor is fed directly from
the frequency converter (FC), operating with
adjustable speed, and the other one is fed directly
from the line, being operated at fixed speed. Thus,
the system operates with two adjustable speed fans
and two fixed speed fans. One of the frequency
converter operates as a “master”, and the other
operates as a “slave”. The “master” imposes the
reference signal and receives the actual value. The
start/stop comands of the auxiliary motors are
given by the frequency converters, according to
process requirements. In order to achieve optimum
control of the temperature, the sensor was installed
in the cooling tower’s collecting tank, and was
connected directly to the frequency converter.
Based on internal PID controller and a dedicated
software for pump and fan applications, the
frequency converter operates in closed loop control
and will run the fan motor in respect to maintain
the outlet water temperature at the reference point.
 receiver.
Line 0,4 kV / 50Hz
Switch
High-speed
Fuses
Line
Contactor
Frequency
θ FC Converter
Temperature
sensor

Interlocked
Contactors
Fig. 6. The power drive equipment cabinets.
Motor
Overcurrent 4.2. Temperature Measured
Protection Characteristics
Some measurements have been made in time. One
M M1 M M2 hundred samples of time, speed and controller
Fan Motors 3~ (M3) 3~ (M4) voltage were taken from the front panel of the
equipment (control panel of the frequency
converter), the speed sensor and the temperature
Fig. 5. The principle scheme of the equipment.
sensor. The samples were introduced in an Excel
The electrical equipment cabinets are table.
presented in Fig. 6, [7, 8, 9]. The electrical cabinets The diagrams of time variations of the
contain the frequency converters and the power temperature for two presumed ambient air
switching and protection equipment, designed to temperatures are presented in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8,
feed the fan motors. There is also included in the respectively.
cabinets the signalling, measuring and
programming equipment.
The temperature control system contains
calibrators, connectors, a general test and
measurement platform, instruments, handheld
instruments for temperature measurement, a
reference point, indicating labels, a relative
recorder, probes, different electrical elements and
assemblies, internal timers and counters of the
digital equipment, power switching devices, a
thermistor element, head and well assemblies,
transmitters and wires. The data acquisition system Fig. 7. Temperature characteristic 1, in steady-state
contains auto-dialers and an alarm monitoring operation.
systems, basic communication devices, a Based on the periodical measurements and the
specialized general data acquisition and analysis visual estimations of the level, it seams that the
Software, a data logger, plug-in cards, signal control system responds according to the
conditioners, USB, RS232, RS485 and parallel port implemented strategy, robust to the exterior
data acquisition systems, a wireless transmitter and
disturbance – the ambient air temperature.
Fig. 8. Temperature characteristic 2, in steady-state
operation.
4 Energy and Economic Efficiency
The analysis of the economic efficiency of
implementing the variable drive configurations has
been done using calculations by a dedicated
software tool, [10]. Records of the electric energy
consumption in similar operating conditions, for
one year, with and without implemented control
system are made. In Fig. 9 are presented the
energy savings, which varies between 10% and
85%, being more consistent during the cold
periods.
Fig. 9. The energy consumption chart.
The evaluations have shown that the recovery time
of investments are less than 3 years.
5 Conclusion
The main contribution of the paper is to present an
industrial implementation of a synchronized
cooling systems, for water cooling towers, in a
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chemical plant, using variable speed drives and an
adequate control strategy, based on a PI
temperature control. The experimental results
confirm the validity of the theoretical
considerations, the validity of the chosen technical
solution and demonstrate lower level electrical
energy consumption compared with the classical
(on/off) systems. Good results were obtained in the
practical implementation, based on an initial
modeling and simulation. The results obtained in
the practical implementation demonstrate that the
control system assures the elimination of the
influence of the environment temperature, which
acts as a system perturbation.
References:
[1] * * * Demand Side Management,
http://www.demandsidemanagement.com
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Control for Energy Efficiency, Energy
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[3] Joo, I., Liu, M., Conger, K., Wang, G.,
Variable Speed Drive (VSD) Applications in
Dual-Duct Constant Volume Systems,
http://txspace.tamu.edu/bitstream/
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Variable Speed Drive Structures and Benefits in
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