Study on the performance of a novel dew-point evaporative cooler based on fiber membrane automatic wicking

Abstract

A dew point evaporative cooler with fiber membrane coated in the wet channel for improving wettability was proposed in this paper. Firstly, Coolplus with the best performance was selected by comparing four kinds of fiber materials. Then, the cooling performance of the cooler was studied at different experimental conditions. It was found that the cooler showed excellent cooling effect at high temperature, low humidity and velocity. The temperature was decreased slowly along the flow direction of primary air. When inlet temperature, relative humidity and velocity were in the range of 25∼40, 40%∼70% and 1 ∼ 2m/s at the condition of 14 water temperature, the maximum temperature drop was 8.35, the cooling capacity per unit area was between 59.7 and 149.4W/m2, and the wet bulb efficiency and dew point efficiency was increased from 42% and 25% to 92% and 76%. When the water temperature was raised from 14 to 28, the temperature drop was only decreased from 8.35 to 6.82. Therefore, the influence of water temperature on the cooling effect is insignificant. The best conditions of temperature 40, relative humidity 40%, velocity 1m/s and water temperature 20 were suggested. Finally, comparison with a similar case was conducted to evaluate the proposed cooler.