Design, Optimization, and manufacturing of a Two-Stage Indirect-Direct Evaporative Cooler

This paper presents a method for design and optimization of two stage indirect-direct evaporative coolers, based on analysis of the second law of thermodynamics. A computer code has been developed incorporating the thermo-hydraulic design method and the thermodynamic optimization. In addition, several experiments have been performed on a manufactured prototype and the results have been compared to those obtained from the computer code. The comparison shows a good agreement between the experimental and analytical results. In addition, by comparing the energy efficiency ratio (EER) of these air conditioners to conventional mechanical air conditioners and direct evaporative coolers, it is deduced that a large amount of energy would be saved, particularly for medium-sized buildings. Besides,the results show that a more desirable air with a lower temperature and humidity will be produced, compared to that of the conventional evaporative coolers.

Keywords:

Energy efficiency ratio (EER) , Evaporative cooling , Second-law optimization analysis ,