Validated open-source Modelica model of direct evaporative cooler with minimal inputs

Abstract

Direct evaporative coolers (DECs) are a low-energy cooling alternative to conventional air conditioning in hot-dry climates. The key component of DEC is the cooling pad, which evaporatively cools the air passing through it. While detailed numerical models of heat and mass transfer have been proposed for the cooling pad, these require many input parameters that are not readily accessible. Alternatively, simplified models lack accuracy and are confined to common types of cooling pad. To address these limitations, we developed and validated a physics-based model, that only needs the nominal data to compute the heat and mass transfer with considerable accuracy. The proposed model is implemented in Modelica, an equation-based object-oriented modeling language. For comparison, a basic lumped model from EnergyPlus based on the efficiency curve of the cooling pad is also implemented. The physics-based model exhibits <2% error from the experimental data and the lumped model exhibits a 12.3% error.