Study on Performance Prediction and Energy Saving of Indirect Evaporative Cooling System

The purpose of this study is to predict the performance of an indirect evaporative cooling system, and to evaluate its energy saving effect when applied to the exhaust heat recovery system of an air-handling unit. We derive the performance correlation of the indirect evaporative cooling system using a plastic heat exchanger based on experimental data obtained in various conditions. We predict the variations in the performance of the system for various return and outdoor air conditioning systems using the obtained correlation. We also analyze the energy saving of the system realized by the exhaust heat recovery using the typical meteorological data for several cities in Korea. The average utilization rate of the sensible cooling system for the exhaust heat recovery is 44.3% during summer, while that of the evaporative cooling system is 96.7%. The energy saving of the evaporative cooling system is much higher compared to the sensible cooling system, and was about 3.89 times the value obtained in Seoul.