Performance evaluation of a novel hybrid cooling system combining indirect evaporative cooler and earth-air heat exchanger

In this research, a new hybrid system combining indirect evaporative cooler and underground air tunnels has been proposed as an eco-friendly alternative for vapor-compression cooling cycles. Indirect evaporative cooling is an efficient thermal comfort cooling method in arid and semi-arid climates. Due to global warming and limited water resources, managing and monitoring of water consumption in evaporative coolers are of particular importance in these regions. In the present study, the cooling efficiency and water consumption of the proposed novel hybrid system are evaluated theoretically. To this aim, a mathematical model was developed for simulating the cooling performance of indirect evaporative cooler and earth-air heat exchanger systems. The fully implicit finite difference scheme was employed in computations. The simulations were validated against some available experimental and numerical data and a good agreement was obtained. The effect of the design parameters of the underground pipe on pre-cooling performance was studied. The results showed that coupling the underground heat exchanger to an indirect evaporative cooler not only improved cooling performance but also significantly decreased water consumption. Besides maintaining the desired thermal comfort level, our investigation indicated that the proposed system can decrease energy and water consumption by about 62% and 45%, respectively. (c) 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

A new hybrid system combining indirect evaporative cooler and underground air tunnels has been proposed as an eco-friendly alternative for vapor-compression cooling cycles. The system improved cooling performance and significantly decreased water consumption, contributing to reductions in energy and water consumption by about 62% and 45%, respectively.