Numerical Simulation of Indirect Evaporative Cooling System

As one of the objectives to further understand the process and help design the indirect evaporative cooling product in a later stage, two codes were written. One was to solve all the basic governing equations involved in the process of air flow in the secondary channel with water evaporation on the surfaces assuming constant wall temperature and laminar flow. It was shown that with the water evaporating on the surfaces, the latent heat transfer rate was about twice of the sensible heat transfer rate, which was approximately verified by the experimental results. The other code was to simulate the actual condition of the indirect evaporative cooler which includes consideration of the interaction with the primary channel in cross flow. It is useful in predicting the performance of indirect evaporative cooler at different operating conditions and for generating temperature profiles in the air streams. Also, the predicted temperature profile of the primary air at the outlet of the test section helped in the design of the test apparatus to accurately check for energy balance in the system.