Cooling Tower for water dyno 1

racear

See if you can get warpspeed to chime in, the man is a genius & can sort this for you, if he is willing.

Come in warpspeed!

Don't double post the question as such, but this is a question for the HVAC, or possibly the Heat Transfer forums.

What you are trying to do is a part of their daily world.

But, they will want some flow conditions, more than just inlet outlet temperatures.

rmw

racear
Everyone who installs a Dyno has asked this question and I don't think it ever gets answered in a straight way.
Here is what we hear, 1000 gallons of water will tolerate the heat transfer of 10 gallons of fuel. Every 901 Superflow has a big plastic 1000 bucket somewhere near by and they pull off the bottom and dump into the top. One can actually run 600 to 700 Hp engines for quite awhile in sweep tests or even engine mapping, but after ten gallons of fuel at full tilt (and a hell of a lot of Hp) you have the makings of tea so you will have to let it cool down. For my own use I found a used chiller the ones that are being removed from large Office buildings and Hospitals, Agra business, etc. It is a huge radiator with a rian bird inside and a 5 hp fan. No calcs for this just the biggest one I could find (used and cheap) and I can run endurance test and stay at ambient even ancillary coolers and Turbo related components.
Best Regards

The heating ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) section of Eng-Tips would be a much more appropriate place to ask this question, as "rmw" has already said. This is what those guys do, and they are good !

"rka" also has the right idea, try and get yourself a cooling tower off the top of some old office building that is being demolished. Go around to a demolition site with a rented flat bed truck and a LOT of beer. You might get lucky, maybe the site foreman and the crane driver like beer ?

A large tank will gradually heat up. In theory the hot water stays at the top and you can draw cold water from the bottom. In practice turbulence in the tank will rapidly mix the water, and the whole lot will gradually heat up together. But a large tank is an excellent idea anyway to smooth out the heat load from the dyno. The cooling tower or radiator could then be made far smaller. Something like an old above ground diesel storage tank, and a really large radiator off a bus or truck with a multi horsepower electric fan should be sufficient for short dyno runs. For continuous full load testing, a large cooling tower is really the only practical solution.

You could always build your own cooling tower, go and have a look at one, they are pretty simple.