Design evolution of indirect evaporative air-cooling system through multiple configurations for the enhancement of heat and mass transfer mechanism

Cooling demand is escalating because of the climate change and population growth in emerging nations. One of the today's concerns is meeting exponentially raising cooling requirements. Additionally, sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as SDG 03, SDG 07, and SDG 13 emphasize the need of environmentally friendly cooling techniques for human thermal comfort. Therefore, it is essential to develop novel approaches for cooling indoor spaces. The current study presents the design evolution of a Maisotsenko cycle-based indirect evaporative air-cooling system (IEC), with a focus on air-water flow patterns, structural design, and the improved energy efficiency by utilizing locally accessible low-cost polymeric materials. This study also comprises a thorough experimental investigation of an indirect evaporative cooling system by developing multiple configurations (Config) of heat and mass exchangers at the stack level. The experimental findings demonstrate that thermal efficiency of the IECs enhances by increasing the ambient air temperature and wetted area in wet channels. Overall, the resultant wetbulb and dewpoint effectiveness of Config 1-Config 6 vary from 0.29 to 1.12 and 0.22 to 0.86, respectively. Moreover, the configuration 6 has the maximum cooling capacity, coefficient of performance (COP), and energy efficiency ratio (EER) of 2.07 kW, 6.91, and 23.59, respectively under control conditions by utilizing the air conditioning laboratory unit. The results clearly indicate that proposed design configurations incorporating polymeric materials, having high CC and EER, are more effective for air-cooling in hot and dry climate conditions.