The aim of this work was to explore an effective and practical way to join moisture wicking quick -drying fibrous materials to aluminium panels, which are used as the evaporation medium in indirect evaporative cooling systems. Instead of marine adhesive, a hot-pressing method, by which the fibrous materials were directly bonded to aluminium sheet samples, was investigated and evaluated through monitoring and analysing the evaporation characteristics. It was found that thermal bonding could be successfully achieved. Samples produced by this method, when compared with adhesively bonded counterparts, demonstrated that the evaporation rate could increase by at least 5%. Moreover, the absence of an adhesive layer can be expected to increase thermal conductivity. Ultimately, this hot-pressing method may provide further opportunities to improve the cooling efficiency of indirect evaporative cooling systems.
Keywords. evaporative cooling; thermal bonding; moisture wicking; water diffusion; evaporation
How to cite this article
Xu, P., Wang, B., Fancey, K., Zhao, X. and Ma, X. (2017). 'Feasibility investigation of a bonding method for fibrous materials and aluminium sheets employed in evaporative cooling systems'. SET Proceedings, 16, pp. 1-9. https://doi.org/10.65582/set.2017.148
