Energy and exergy performance comparison of conventional, dew point and new external-cooling indirect evaporative coolers

Abstract

External-cooling indirect evaporative cooling is an effective energy saving technology, where air–water finned coils are linked with packed cooling tower by water pipes. However, external-cooling indirect evaporative coolers with different configurations and working air sources are incomprehensively analyzed and compared. This study presented an energy and exergy analysis of five external-cooling indirect evaporative coolers, including conventional configuration, dew point configuration, newly patented dew point configuration, and energy recovery forms of the first two. In order to analyze the evaporative cooler and its hybrid system combined with mechanical vapor compression system, the numerical model and experimental correlation are used. The effect of four selected parameters (ambient temperature, ambient humidity ratio, total number of transfer units and fresh air flowrate), and the summer energy saving potential in three different cities are studied. The analysis results show that the new dew point configuration has the best performance under the conditions of high temperature, high humidity, and high fresh air flowrate. This new dew point cooler’s hybrid system achieves the best energy saving rate in humid and arid climates, between 19.1% and 48.5% compared with the pure mechanical vapor compression system. In this study, the advantages and disadvantages of presented designs are established and their application potential under different climates is estimated.