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Membrane Evaporative Cooling to 30°C or Less
Author(s) -
LOEB SIDNEY
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
annals of the new york academy of sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.712
H-Index - 248
eISSN - 1749-6632
pISSN - 0077-8923
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2003.tb06025.x
Subject(s) - evaporative cooler , environmental science , chemistry , thermodynamics , physics
A bstract : Microporous hydrophobic membranes were examined for use in steady state membrane evaporative air cooling. The examination consisted of calculating membrane performance as a function of overall heat and mass transfer coefficients already obtained and reported in Part 1 (previous paper, this volume). This performance was compared with that obtained by similar calculations made on existing evaporative air coolers. It was found that the cooling performance of the membrane evaporative air cooler was not as good as that of the existing evaporative air cooler. This is to be expected since the existing cooler has only one resistance, the air boundary layer (ABL), whereas the membrane cooler has the ABL and the membrane resistance. However, the membrane air cooler has advantages, such as appreciably lower water consumption and operation under more sanitary conditions, that is, without intimate conjunction of flowing air and liquid water on solid surfaces.