RECENT RESEARCHES IN INDIRECT EVAPORATIVE COOLER - III - OPTIMIZATIONOF THE COOLING POTENTIAL OF A ROOM-COUPLED INDIRECT EVAPORATIVE COOLER

A mathematical model based on heat transfer principles, for characteri zing the cooling performance of a room coupled indirect evaporative co oler (tube type) has been developed. Two dimensionless parameters, i.e . environment factor, phi and cooling factor, CF have been defined to characterize the performance of IEC coupled with a room. The optimum v alues of these parameters have been obtained for different environment al and thermal load conditions. In addition to this, a linear relation ship has been obtained for the optimum size of a cooler to remove maxi mum heat from a room of given size. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.