The Effect of Dry and Wet Bulb Temperature Variation on the Performance of the Indirect Evaporative Cooler

Abstract

The research is about designing and building up an evaporative cooling system, working by two- stages evaporative cooling system using outer air (pure air). The system is founded by designing and making a heat exchanger of orthogonal flow from Aluminum sheets of (30*60*40) cm, which represents the first stage of the system (indirect stage). The second stage (direct stage) of the system is represented by making an equipment of air washing (cylindrical) with (45 height, 60 width, 3 thickness) cm. The cooling system pulls outer air by a Centrifugal fan. The air passes through the heat exchanger pipes to be cooled tangibly (without moistening). Then it goes over the equipment of air washing to be cooled and cools the specified space. Computer software was designed by FORTRAN Language (FORTRAN 90) to predict the evaporative air cooler performance to know the proper environmental and design conditions of the system. Some variables were made to study their effect on the thermal performance of the system. The studied variable is to change the volumetric flow rate of air from (750 cfm) to (2000 cfm) of the dry side, and from (750 cfm) to (2500 cfm) of the wet side. The pipe length was changed from (20 cm) to (45 cm), and its diameter from (0.5 cm) to (3 cm). Those were the design changes. On the environmental changes, we studied the effect of changing the temperature on the dry or wet bulb of the system. The study is taken place in Tikrit University (34. 35N; 43.37 E), to determine the suitability of the weather conditions of the region for the work of the system. It was taken place in the late August for two consecutive days, with readings of 24 hours. The results show that the best quantity of the air supplied, which represent the best performance of the system (750 cfm) and (1000 cfm) for the wet side when the diameter (1-1.5 cm) and length is (45 cm). The results show also the possibility of the work of this system for the region mentioned because it is characterized by its hot and dry climate in the summer, as the efficiency of evaporative evaporator increases the hot and dry environment by 80%.