Cooling energy consumption and operating costs: evaporative all-air and air-and-water systems in the Italian climate

The economic analysis for running two kinds of hybrid air conditioning syst ems: all-air and air-and-water, both with add-on evaporative cooling stages , is studied in this paper. Single-duct, single-zone, constant volume syste ms are dealt with. Processing the climatic data of the European 'test refer ence year-TRY for Italy, a comparison of such systems' performance versus t he relative traditional one is performed. Energy consumption and operating costs are evaluated by an appropriate computer code written with the aim of : (i) making plain the input/output of data; and (ii) displaying very frien dly software masks as well as useful graphical elaboration. On the basis of outdoor air state, calculations are performed according to two different p rocedures: (a) hourly, following the TRY profile; and (b) for each bin, 1 d egrees C wide, in which the simultaneous dry- and wet-bulb temperatures fal l. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.