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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 NEED FOR AIR COOLING

One of the main purposes of a building is to provide a comfortable

environment for its occupants. In a modern industrial society, man spends the
greater part of his life in indoors. During recent decades, this has resulted in
higher interest in studying the influence of indoor climate. A reasonable
thermal climate can be given by cooling the indoor air by some means which
increase the productivity of the occupants.

Higher air temperature inside a building is found to reduce the

productivity of the occupants and increase the heat stress inside the buildings.
In poultry houses, higher temperature reduces feed consumption, weight gain,
and egg yield. All these aspects demand, cooling of indoor air in hot climate
zones. Air cooling is a method of achieving a comfortable indoor climate by
reducing the air temperature, especially in the arid region of the world. In
general 25°C, 60 % RH is recommended comfort conditions. This can be
achieved by using air conditioning system. Use of adiabatic air coolers is also
very common.

1.2 AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEMS

Air conditioning is the process of conditioning the indoor air for the
specified thermal comfort. An air conditioner is an appliance, system or
machine, designed to stabilize the air temperature and humidity within an
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area. It is used for cooling as well as heating, depending on the air

temperature at a given time, typically using refrigeration cycle. Some times,
evaporative cooling is used for comfort cooling in building and motor
vehicles. Air conditioning mainly is used for comfort and process application.
Comfort application aims to provide a building indoor environment that
means relatively constant in a range, preferred by humans, despite the
changes in external weather conditions or in internal heat loads. Comfort
applications for various building types are quite different and may be
categorized as low- rise building, high- rise building, commercial building,
institutional building and industrial space.

Process applications aim to provide a suitable environment for a

process being carried out, regardless of internal heat and humidity loads and
external weather conditions. Process applications include Data Centers,
Textile Industries, Chemical and Biological Laboratories, Mines and others.

Air-conditioning in hot and arid environments, is an essential

requirement for supporting of daily human activities. The Middle East and
many other countries around the globe have a long summer season with a
daily average temperature of 35° C and maximum values in the upper forties.
In addition, long spells of humid weather occur during the summer season
with relatively lower temperatures, in the mid thirties and very high relative
humidity, with average values above 60 % and maximum values close to
90 %. In many of these countries, the energy used to condition and cool the
indoor air ranges are from 40 to 70 % of the total energy consumption of the
country. On a global scale, the most common method used to accomplish
indoor air conditioning is the Mechanical Vapour Compression (MVC)
system. The electric power required to operate these systems is generated by
the combustion of fossil fuels, which generate a wide range of harmful
pollutants, i.e., nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, hydrocarbons, soot, and
particulate matter.
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1.3 AIR COOLERS

With the onset of the energy crisis and environmental problems

caused by conventional air conditioners, the importance of the evaporative
cooling has grown further. Air can be cooled and under ideal conditions gets
saturated with water vapor by passing it over an appropriate wetted surface. If
there is no heat transfer from surroundings, the process is adiabatic, i.e., air
loses a certain amount of sensible heat, but gains an equal amount of latent
heat of water vapor. This method is now widely used in air conditioning
applications, such as humidifier, cooling tower and evaporative cooler.
Evaporative air-cooling is economical, energy efficient and pollution free, and
is an easily available method of achieving a comfortable indoor climate,
especially in the arid regions.

An evaporative air cooler is a device that cools air through the

simple evaporation of water. Evaporative cooling differs from air
conditioning by refrigeration and absorptive refrigeration. In the absence of
compressor, power consumption is reduced considerably.

Evaporative cooling is the phenomenon in which evaporation of a

liquid, typically into surrounding air, cools an object or a liquid in contact
with it. Latent heat describes the amount of heat needed to evaporate the
liquid. This heat comes from the liquid itself and the surrounding air and the
surface. When considering water evaporating into air, the wet bulb
temperature (WBT), as compared to the air’s dry bulb temperature (DBT) is a
measure of the potential for evaporative cooling. The greater difference
between these temperatures, the greater is the evaporative cooling effect.

Evaporative cooling is especially well suited for climates, where

the air is hot and humidity is low. In a country like India, most of the places
are hot and low humid climate and most of the industries were built with shed
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having asbestos roofs which have higher heating load inside the shed. The
evaporative air coolers are best suited for such industrial sheds.

1.3.1 Types of Evaporative Air Coolers

The evaporative air coolers are broadly classified into the following
categories,

i. Direct evaporative air coolers

ii. Indirect evaporative air coolers

Direct evaporative air cooler is the simplest air cooler, shown in

Figure 1.1. It has a blower, water- soaked pad, filter etc. The most familiar air
cooler is the cabinet air cooler. Here, a convenient cabinet is usually
surrounded by wetted pads. When the water passes over these wetted pads,
the water evaporates by taking the heat from the incoming air, thereby
reduces the dry bulb temperature of the incoming air, with corresponding
increase in air humidity.

Figure 1.1a Direct evaporative air cooler

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Figure 1.1b Schematic diagram of cooling pad

The configuration of a drip-type direct evaporative cooler is shown

in Figure1.2. It has three pads in the side walls and the last side used as
washed air outlet. Water is sprinkled to wet the pad material through the
distribution unit and recycled from the basin driven by a pump. The water
sprinkled onto the top edges of pad is distributed further by gravity and
capillarity. The effectiveness of a drip-type cooler depends largely upon pads
that combine maximum clean wet surface area with minimum air flow
resistance. This requires materials having either good ‘‘wick” characteristics
or surfaces that spread water rapidly by capillary action and through which
air easily passes. Some evaporative air coolers (also called curtain coolers)
have a sheet of canvas or strong absorbent cloth used as the evaporative
surface.
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Figure 1.2 Drip type direct evaporative cooling system

(a) Cross sectional view; (b) Side view

Neglecting heat flux transferred from surrounding, air is cooled and

humidified with constant enthalpy, i.e. air loses a certain amount of sensible
heat as well as gains an equal amount of latent heat by water evaporation.
Water temperature in the basin will almost be a certain value that is slightly
higher than the wet-bulb temperature of inlet air during a stable operation
period of the cooler. Thus, the air process in the direct evaporative cooler is
different from that of cooling tower in some extent. Figure 1.3 shows the
psychometric processes on direct evaporative air cooler. The point 1 in the
psychometric refers the inlet condition of the air and the point 2 refers the
outlet condition of the air, whose temperature is lower than the entering air
temperature and humidity higher than the inlet air.
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Figure 1.3 Psychometric processes on direct evaporative air cooler

An indirect evaporative air cooler has a secondary heat exchanger

which prevents humidity from being added to the air stream, which enters the
space. Evaporative cooler can be used as a sole cooling system, as an
alternative cooling system to a conventional refrigerant air conditioner, or in
combination with a refrigeration system.

Indirect evaporative cooling system shown in Figure 1.4 uses two

streams of ambient air in the process; i.e. dry channel for intake ambient
air (1), and wet channel for secondary air (2), separated by a thin-film
polymer wall to prevent moisture penetration between them. Figure 1.5 shows
the psychometric process on indirect evaporative air cooler. Along the flow
path1–2, the intake air loses sensible heat to the wet side for water
evaporation and the secondary air is cooled in direct contact with water as
path 1–3. The outlet temperature can be decreased theoretically close to
ambient wet bulb temperature. Indirect or two stage evaporative air coolers do
not add humidity to the air, but cost is more than direct coolers and it operates
at a lower efficiency.
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Figure 1.4 Indirect evaporative air cooling process

Figure 1.5 Psychometric processes on indirect evaporative air cooler

Two stage evaporative coolers combine indirect with direct

evaporative cooling. This is accomplished by passing air inside a heat
exchanger whic is cooled by evaporation on the outside. In the second stage,
the pre- cooled air passes through a water- soaked wetted pad and picks up
humidity as it cools. Because the air supply to the second stage evaporator is
there cooled, less humidity is added to the air, whose affinity for moisture is
directly related to the temperature. The relative humidity of the cool air is in
between 50 and 70 percent, dependent on the regional climate. However, the
operating cost of the indirect evaporative cooler is almost equal to operating
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the air conditioner. Similarly the efficiency of the indirect evaporative air
cooler is very low, when compared with the direct evaporative air coolers.

1.4 OBJECTIVE OF THE PRESENT STUDY

Country like India has large number of industrial sheds fitted with
asbestos roofs. Uses of conventional air conditioning system for such
industrial sheds are very costly and are not used. Evaporative cooling can be a
suitable remedy. But, the presently available wetted pad type coolers are
suitable for handling small air volumes and are not suitable for such industrial
sheds. Under these circumstances, the objective of the present research work
is

i. To develop a new kind of air cooler which can provide large

quantity of cooled air suitable for large industrial sheds
located in tropical climates (like India), using centrifugal
atomizing technique.

ii. To analyze the performance of such air cooler fitted in a

typical industrial shed.

iii. To optimize the system for better performance.

1.5 OUTLINE OF THE THESIS

A detailed literature survey has been carried out on various research

works carried out in the past 25 years related to evaporative air cooling of
building spaces and are presented in Chapter 2. An experimental facility has
been developed to measure the performance of centrifugal atomizer type air
cooler fitted with a typical industrial shed, which is discussed in chapter 3.
The results of the experimental study are presented and discussed in
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Chapter 4. Optimizations of the system using design of experiments are

carried out and are presented in Chapter 5. The major conclusions derived
from the research work are presented in Chapter 6. The experimental data and
error analysis are presented in appendices. The thesis ends with a list of
references.