Development And Performance Evaluation Of An Indirect Evaporative Air Cooler

Evaporative cooling is an alternative and efficient method of cooling in dry climates. When a liquid evaporates into the surrounding gas, the energy required for the change of phase produces a cooling effect. The wet bulb depression is the measure of potential for evaporative cooling. Greater the wet bulb depression greater is the cooling effect, and vice versa. The residential desert cooler, apart from cooling the air increases the humidity of the air in the room by absorbing moisture from the water supplied to the cooler. This may result in an undesirable increase in humidity level. Allergies is an additional problem with direct evaporative coolers. Indirect evaporative cooling does not have these two drawbacks. In the present work a small indirect evaporative cooler is developed with a cross flow heat exchanger and the performance of the cooler is evaluated under controlled environmental conditions. The results are compared with the results of an analytical model developed by assuming constant water film temperature on the external wall of the heat exchanger tube. The experimental results of the cooler show a satisfactory agreement with the analytical values. Design calculations are presented to show the performance characteristics of indirect evaporative coolers under different temperature and humidity conditions of the ambient. It has been shown that reducing the heat exchanger tube diameter to around 2 mm results in better cooling effect. Climatic conditions of different Indian cities are discussed with respect to the expected effectiveness of indirect evaporative coolers.