Numerical study of a novel counter-flow heat and mass exchanger for dew point evaporative cooling

摘要

The paper presents numerical investigation of a novel counter-flow heat and mass exchanger used in the indirect evaporative dew point cooling systems, a potential alternative to the conventional mechanical compression air conditioning systems. Numeric simulation was carried out to optimise the geometrical sizes and operating conditions of the exchanger in order to enhance the cooling (dew point and wet bulb) effectiveness of the exchanger and maximise the energy efficiency of the dew point cooling system. The results of the simulations indicated that cooling (dew point and wet bulb) effectiveness and energy efficiency are largely dependent on the dimensions of the airflow passages, air velocity and working-to-intake-air ratio, and less dependent on the temperature of the feed water. It is recommended that exchanger intake air velocity should be controlled to a value below 0.3-0.5 m/s; height of air passage (channel) should be set to 6 mm or below and the length of the passage should be 200 time the height; the working-to-intake-air ratio should be around 0.4. Under the UK summer design condition, i.e., 28 ℃ of dry bulb temperature, 20 ℃ of wet bulb temperature and 16 ℃ of dew point temperature, the exchanger can achieve wet-bulb effectiveness of up to 1.3 and dew-point effectiveness of up to 0.9.