Laboratory study on the cooling effect of flash water evaporative cooling technology for ventilation and air-conditioning of buildings

This paper presents a simple cooling technology using flash water evaporation. The technology combines a water atomizer with a plate heat exchanger used for heat recovery of a ventilation system. It is mainly used to cool the ventilation airflow from outdoors and is particularly suitable to be used in warm/hot and dry environment where dehumidification of outdoor air is not needed. A laboratory experiment was designed and conducted to evaluate the cooling effectiveness of this technology. The experiment was conducted in a twin-climate chamber. One chamber simulated warm/hot and dry outdoor environments and the other simulated an air-conditioned indoor environment. The flash water evaporation cooling device was installed in the chamber that simulated indoor environment. The air from the chamber simulating outdoor environment was introduced into the cooling device and cooled by the flash water evaporation. Two outdoor summer climates were simulated in the study, i.e. the design summer climate of Las Vegas and the extreme summer climate of Copenhagen represented hot/dry and warm/dry climates. The results showed that the flash evaporative cooling technology, a simple and green cooling technology, is effective for ventilation and air-conditioning in warm/hot and dry climate zones. The technology can provide fresh outdoor air with a temperature of 4 to 7 °C lower than room air temperature.