Experimental study on the heat exchange effectiveness of a dry coil indirect evaporation cooler under various operating conditions

In this study, a pilot Dry Coil IEC unit, an indirect evaporation cooler established by connecting a direct evaporation cooler and a sensible heat exchanger (SHE) in series, was made, and the effectiveness data of the pilot unit were acquired under various operation conditions in an environmental chamber realizing a wide-range of indoor and outdoor air conditions. The test result shows that over 40% effectiveness can be acquired even in hot and humid climates by using the Dry Coil IEC proposed in this paper. The Dry Coil IEC reduces the cooling coil size by pre-cooling the process air during the cooling season. It can also be used as an SHE reclaiming the sensible heat from the exhaust air during winter operation. The pilot unit recovered over 60% of sensible heat in the test. In addition, a simplified model of Dry Coil IEC returning the various operation conditions was developed based on existing models of an SHE and a direct evaporative cooler. A polynomial equation returning the effectiveness of the Dry Coil IEC was derived as a function of seven independent variables highly influencing the performance of the unit. The experimental data acquired by the pilot unit operation agree well with the effectiveness values of the Dry Coil IEC predicted by the proposed model. It was also identified that the proposed equation agrees well with the existing model of the Dry Coil IEC applied to the energy simulation program.