Performance Comparison between Indirect Evaporative Coolers made of Aluminum, Plastic or Plastic/Paper

Title & Authors
Performance Comparison between Indirect Evaporative Coolers made of Aluminum, Plastic or Plastic/Paper
Kim, Nae-Hyun;

Abstract
In Korea, summer is hot and humid, and air-conditioners consume lots of electricity. In such case, simultaneous usage of indirect evaporative cooler may reduce the sensible heat and save the electricity. In this study, heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of indirect evaporative cooler made of aluminum, plastic, plastic/paper are investigated both under dry or wet condition. Results show that indirect evaporation efficiencies of the plastic/paper sample (38.5% ~ 51.4%) are approximately the same as those of the aluminum sample (41.9% ~ 47.5%), and are larger than those of the plastic sample (29.0% ~ 37.4%). This suggests that the plastic/paper sample could be a good substitute to the aluminum sample. However, the pressure drops across the paper channel are 92% ~ 106% larger than those across the aluminum channel. The heat transfer coefficients of the paper channel under dry condition are 15% ~ 44% larger than those of the plastic channel. The increases are 185% ~ 203% for the aluminum channel. The pressure drops of the paper channel are 34% ~ 48% larger than those of the plastic channel and 93% ~ 106% larger than those of the aluminum channel. Rigorous heat transfer analysis reveals that, for the plastic sample, 30% ~ 37% of the wet channels remain dry, whereas all the channels are wet for plastic/paper sample. For aluminum sample, the ratio is 17% ~ 23%.
Keywords
Aluminum;Indirect evaporative cooler;Performance;Paper;Plastic;
Language
Korean
Cited by
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