Evaporative cooling solution on engine hall ventilation

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HFO engine power plant Diesel engine MAN 18V51/60TS Kossodo Burkina Faso Sonabel Power house ventilation system Axial fans Generator side blowing unit AAF Clarcor Boet Stopson IAC Splitters with spread metal protection Acoustic baffles Industrial silencer 25 dB attenuation 85 dB at 1 meter AAF Clarcor Boet Stopson IAC Engine hall ventilation Evaporative cooling cooling solution Amerkool

SAI has supplied in 2020 a set of ventilation units for an important power station located in the suburbs of a Sahelian capital city.  This 55 MW power house is equipped with 3 large HFO engines that have been delivered by one of the EPC leaders in the construction of power plants and power lines in Africa. Prior to the supply of the ventilation packages, SAI acoustic engineers have also completed an acoustic study with predictive noise mapping in order to check the conformity of the plant noise impact with the local noise legislation.

Since temperatures on site can reach up to 47 °C, it’s very difficult to maintain an acceptable temperature inside of the engine hall. To be able to decrease the ambient air temperature and blow “fresh” air to cool down the plant, we integrated an evaporative cooling solution. The generator side ventilation units are therefore equipped with the following components:

With over 220 000 m3/h of air blown per engine, the overall airflow in the power house is 660 000 m3/h. Depending on the ambient temperature and relative humidity on site, the evaporative cooling system can achieve cooling performances between 5 to 15°C!

On this project, SAI has also integrated the supply of the electrical package: control panels with soft starters for the axial fans, PLC panels for the evaporative coolers and TCP/IP interface for the communication with the power house SCADA.