Parametric study of a membrane-based semi-direct evaporative cooling system

Polymer heat exchangers are gaining increasing attention in the field of air cooling applications. This paper aims to present a parametrical analysis on a membrane-based semi-direct evaporative cooler (MSDEC) with internal baffles. A mathematical model has been established to achieve an in-depth understanding of the heat and mass transfer process of the proposed MSDEC. An experimental system has been employed to study the evaporative cooling performance of the hollow fiber module and validate the mathematical process. Simulation results demonstrated that the installation of baffles can improve the wet-bulb effectiveness by up to 32%. In addition, the developed model is adopted to study the air treatment performance of the MSDEC with baffles by evaluating the influence of various essential parameters including the fiber length, the number of fiber rows, the fiber row spacing, the geometrical dimension of baffles, and the inlet air velocity. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.