A dual-purpose innovative cooling cycle for future sustainability

A surge in cooling demand is observed in the last few decades because of rising temperatures, growing population, high urbanization, and improved living standards. Conventional vapor compression systems are energy intensive and result in harmful emissions. Therefore, there is a need to develop unconventional water-based cooling systems with lower energy consumption and benign emissions. In this regard, a dual-purpose innovative indirect evaporative cooling system is proposed and tested. The system aimed to address the major limitations in existing systems like water consumption, complex wall, low heat transfer rate, and intensive maintenance requirements. The experimental investigation revealed that the proposed system achieved a temperature drop of as high as 19 °C, a cooling capacity of 118 W, and a coefficient of performance of 29 (only for cooling) at a higher outdoor air temperature of 46 °C. Moreover, the system produced the supply air temperature at 21±0.5 °C for different outdoor air temperatures varying between 30 to 46 °C. Furthermore, the proposed IEC system can be used as a cooling tower to cool the intake water while simultaneously providing cool air. The experiments show that water in a humidifier achieves wet bulb temperature irrespective of water intake temperature. For experimentation, the water intake varied from 15 to 45 °C. Therefore, developing this advanced system is potentially a remarkable step toward the commercial-scale realization of indirect evaporative cooling technology.