Design of Compact Evaporative Cooler to Improve Cooling Efficiency and To Evaluate Performance of Different Cooling Pad Material

The concept of evaporative cooling to provide comfort to human beings in a building is not new and has been used in different parts of a world by using different ways and materials. Vapour compression refrigeration system and Air-conditioning using gases like CFCs and HFCs reduces the utility of evaporative cooling though they have capacity of ozone layer depletion. So many manufacturers have come with different shaped evaporative coolers and different types of pad materials. In this work new evaporative cooler is designed which is semi-circular in shape instead of rectangular shape (normally used now a days) and the comparison between rectangular shaped cooler and new designed semi-circular shaped cooler is made with Khus as a cooling pad material in terms of temperature drop, humidity rise and cooling efficiency. By using Semi-circular shaped utilisation of water increases, more volume of air comes in contact due to stream line pattern, require less cooling pad material and become compact, thus required less space for installation The newly designed evaporative cooler is consists of two tanks which are perfectly insulated to reduce heat transfer from water and is also incorporated with flow control valve to reduce water consumption and effect of dust mites. The result obtained shows that temperature drop in semi-circular shaped cooler is 5.80C as compared to 3.90C in rectangular shaped and also in rectangular shaped cooler humidity rise is more as compared to semi-circular shaped. The cooling efficiency is improved up to 20.43 % with new design. Also the cost of newly designed Semi-circular shaped cooler is less than rectangular shaped cooler.As well as performance of different cooling pad materials like Celdek, Khus, Coconut coir and Bamboo fiber (new material) is analyzed in terms of temperature drop, humidity rise and cooling efficiency by using normal water and chilled water with newly designed semi-circular shape cooler. Also best cooling pad materials in terms of human comfort and finally best cooling pad materials according to climate of Bhopal is analyzed in this work. The result obtained shows that maximum temperature drop takes place for Celdek followed by Khus, Coconut and least temperature drop is obtained for Bamboo fiber for both normal water and chilled water .While minimum rise in humidity is obtained for Bamboo for both normal and chilled water and maximum for Khus in normal water and Celdek in chilled water. But the humidity rise is less for chilled water than normal water. With respect to human comfort Celdek is a best materials followed by Coconut, Bamboo fiber and Khus. As per weather data of Bhopal, the climate of Bhopal in summer is hot and dry so best material recommended for the evaporative cooling in the climate of Bhopal is Celdek.