Simulation and performance enhancement of the air cooling system in the valve halls of a DC/AC power converter station

The present article reports on a ventilation system that uses impinging air jets to remove a portion of the heat generated in DC/AC converter towers. Each tower is a vertical stack of electronic components used in the power conversion. Airflow from the ventilation system enters the room through inlet ports located on the ground at two opposite sides of the DC/AC converter towers. The existing ventilation system circulates sufficient airflow in terms of the total heating load; however, elevated temperatures were reported within the towers due to poor air circulation. A numerical study has been conducted to investigate steady three-dimensional (3-D) turbulent mixed (combined free and forced) convection air cooling of vertical stacks of heat-generating blocks simulating typical towers in two valve halls of a DC/AC power converter station. The simulation results include the magnitudes of the net airflows for all the inter-block gaps, the maximum temperature in each gap, and the flow structure represented by streamlines at various locations of the 3-D domain. The location of the inlet, the inlet size and aspect ratio, and the location on the tower at which the airflow was aimed were varied parametrically to improve the ventilation relative to the existing design. These results demonstrate that, for fixed inlet mass flow rate, all the towers’ heat generating surfaces can be kept under 60°C via simple modifications of the variables used in the parametric study.