Modeling and experimental study of indirect evaporative cooler for energy recovery in hot and humid regions

摘要

The indirect evaporative cooler (IEC), regarded as a low-carbon cooling device, is recently proposed as an energy recovery device installed before an air handling unit (AHU) for energy conservation of air-conditioning system in hot and humid regions.In this system, the exhausted air from air-conditioned space is used as secondary air to cool the inlet fresh air.As the fresh air humidity is high, condensation may occur.Although the related studies on IEC with only sensible cooling in the dry channels have been well studied, the performance of IEC with condensation has seldom been reported.Thus, both numerical modeling and experiment study of IEC with condensation are conducted.The experiment is designed to investigate how condensation affects the IEC performance and to obtain data for model validation.The air temperature and humidity distribution inside IEC and detail air handling process are simulated by the validated model.The results show that the condensation weakens the sensible heat transfer rate but improve the latent and total heat transfer rate.Because of condensation, both the sensible and latent cooling load can be reduced by IEC.It is estimated that 30％ ～ 40％ energy saving can be achieved in Hong Kong.