After the success of Pingshan phase I project, Hamon was awarded the cooling tower of phase II. Pingshan II is the largest and tallest cooling tower in the world, rising to 210 m above ground level. The previous record was held by the two cooling towers of the Kalisindh power plant in India (8 m shorter).
It is the most powerful coal fired unit ever built.
The cooling tower has exceptional characteristics as well:
• External base diameter: Ø174 m
• External exhaust diameter: Ø98 m
• 35 000 m³ of heat exchange fill manufactured by a Hamon factory
The main challenges were linked to the outstanding size of the cooling tower:
• Guarantee the performance and maintain cold water within the applicable tolerances.
• Discharge the clean gas without obstruction. Similarly to phase I, the new cooling tower is equipped with a flue gas duct to release the cleaned flue gas coming from the gas scrubber. This duct is supported by the cooling tower shell itself and a concrete support located in the cooling tower center. No intermediate support has been considered to improve the internal air distribution.
In order to guarantee the performance in such a large cooling tower, thermal design and manufacturing were optimized.
• Several computational fluid dynamics analysis were performed in order to validate the conventional designing tools in this huge cooling tower and guarantee the cooling performance within a 0.1°C range.
• The duct of 9.5 m diameter made of FRP enters the shell at 47 m above the ground level to release the flue gas coming from the gas scrubber. Applying state-of-the-art technology, the internal duct is only supported on 2 points without any intermediate support, meaning an exceptional free span of 76 m.
