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Experimental Analysis of the Cooling Performance of A Fresh Air Handling Unit

  • Received: 09 January 2020 Accepted: 13 April 2020 Published: 20 April 2020
  • An experimental investigation of the performance of a fresh air handling unit integrating indirect evaporative and vapor compression cooling is conducted. Temperature and relative humidity measurements at main points within the cooling unit were logged using a wireless data acquisition system. Experimental data downloaded from the acquisition system is used for linear regression analysis, and to calculate the wet-bulb thermal effectiveness, cooling capacity and coefficient of performance of the unit. The air conditioning unit is a patented system designed and assembled at the Gulf Organisation for Research and Development (GORD) in Qatar. The peak wet-bulb thermal effectiveness of the system was found to be 1.3, and the COP was 3.4. The results showed that the unit could save as nearly 60% of the sensible cooling load required by a conventional vapor compression cooling unit. In addition, the unit could reduce power consumption by 36% when utilizing the indirect evaporative cooling cycle. Depending on ambient conditions, the investigated unit generated enough condensate to meet the water requirements of the indirect evaporative cooling cycle, which made the air conditioning system sustainable.

    Citation: Yousef Al Horr, Bourhan Tashtoush. Experimental Analysis of the Cooling Performance of A Fresh Air Handling Unit[J]. AIMS Energy, 2020, 8(2): 299-319. doi: 10.3934/energy.2020.2.299

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  • An experimental investigation of the performance of a fresh air handling unit integrating indirect evaporative and vapor compression cooling is conducted. Temperature and relative humidity measurements at main points within the cooling unit were logged using a wireless data acquisition system. Experimental data downloaded from the acquisition system is used for linear regression analysis, and to calculate the wet-bulb thermal effectiveness, cooling capacity and coefficient of performance of the unit. The air conditioning unit is a patented system designed and assembled at the Gulf Organisation for Research and Development (GORD) in Qatar. The peak wet-bulb thermal effectiveness of the system was found to be 1.3, and the COP was 3.4. The results showed that the unit could save as nearly 60% of the sensible cooling load required by a conventional vapor compression cooling unit. In addition, the unit could reduce power consumption by 36% when utilizing the indirect evaporative cooling cycle. Depending on ambient conditions, the investigated unit generated enough condensate to meet the water requirements of the indirect evaporative cooling cycle, which made the air conditioning system sustainable.


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  • © 2020 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)
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