Summarises the approach used in teaching the subject of cooling tower thermal performance to senior undergraduates of mechanical engineering. This approach can be subdivided into three parts. First, preliminary background information on the basic heat and mass transfer processes occurring at the water droplet level is given, with an example of transient water droplet cooling. Then a simple one-dimensional analysis of an idealised spray-type tower is presented to show how cooling tower performance is affected by fill height, water retention time, and air and water mass flow rates. Finally, in order to fully understand how cooling tower performance is obtained, a series of experiments are performed on the small laboratory cooling tower.

KEYWORDS: cooling towers, performance, heat flow, experiment, laboratories, analysis, measuring