(151a) Estimating Maximum Pond Water Temperature in an Industrial Facility

Estimating water temperature in an outdoor pond or reservoir is a challenging issue for domestic and industrial purposes. The temperature estimation requires the simultaneous application of radiative, convective and conductive heat transfer along with evaporative heat loss. There are many industrial and domestic applications where water temperature estimation is critical.  As an example, estimating water temperature can help outdoor swimming pool owners to have a proper plan for heating the water or covering the pool in different seasons. In pisciculture, it is significant to know the maximum daily water temperature rise to avoid losing fish due to extreme low or high water temperatures. Many industrial plants in tropical areas use outdoor water reservoirs for firefighting purposes. It is critical to estimate highest water temperature in such reservoirs to avoid malfunction of firefighting equipment and piping during fire incidents.

This paper uses a  real industrial application as a case study to  estimate the maximum pond water temperature. Accurate temperature estimation is required to choose the proper piping material for fire service piping for facility in this case study.  This study proposes a simple but accurate method to estimate maximum water temperature in outdoor ponds or reservoirs. The study uses correlations available in literature with minor modifications to calculate interfacial heat transfer which is a combination of radiation heat transfer, convection heat transfer, evaporative heat loss, and conduction heat transfer. The results of proposed method are compared with real water temperature measurements and results of numerical simulation of the reservoir by ANSYS Fluent software. The results show a reasonable accuracy for the proposed method to calculate the maximum water temperature in open outdoor reservoirs.