Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

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Materials Today: Proceedings

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Determination of water loss for an adiabatic cooling of a fin fan water

cooler
Vijay W. Bhatkar
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Marathwada Mitra Mandal’s College of Engineering, Pune 411052, MS, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Evaporative coolers are suitable where summer is hot and dry. The evaporative pad made from cellulose
Available online xxxx material reduces the condensation temperature and improve the specific cooling power of an air cooled
condenser. Water is needed in the adiabatic cooler to cool the fresh hot outside air and to reduce the con-
Keywords: densing temperature. The cooler manufacturing companies as well as the customers should be aware
Adiabatic cooling about the water loss throughout the year for a particular cooler. In this paper, the main intention is to
Cellulose pads determine the water loss for the specific fin fan cooler. When the pads are wetted, temperature of air
Fin fan cooler
decreases which results into cooling and humidified air. The water losses are estimated with the weather
Humidity
Saturation efficiency
data for different pad materials. Due to the scale formation in evaporative condenser, pressure drop
increases and pad saturation efficiency decreases. It is estimated that 5.2 L per hour water consumption
is needed for the fin fan cooler studied at dry bulb temperature of air at 38 °C in summer condition.
Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 3rd International e-Con-
ference on Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering and nanoTechnology.

1. Introduction around 14.3% is observed with the use of evaporative condenser

In the peak summer when the atmospheric temperature is very
high, energy efficiency ratio reduces for an air conditioner and con-
sumption of electricity increases when there is a severe shortage of
electricity due to limited resources of coal, water and oil [1]. Eva-
porative condensers needed less water over water cooled con-
denser and provide higher specific cooling power. Evaporative
condensers are used mostly where the summer is hot and dry as
people cannot afford the air conditioners [2]. In evaporative con-
densers, electricity can be saved as the condenser temperate drops
due to chilled water and heat rejection factor can be increased [3].
Performance parameters of refrigeration system such as coefficient
of performance, energy conserved, refrigeration capacity and com-
pressor on–off are studied. Cooling effect improved from 5 to 7.5%
for every temperature degree drop [4,5]. Watt introduced the anal-
ysis for direct and indirect evaporative coolers in air conditioning
handbook [5]. Cooler capacity can be increased with pre-cooling
of intake air. The main intention is to analyze the drift test methods
for cooling towers and drift measurements for dry and adiabatic
cooler [6]. It is found that as the condensation temperature
increases, energy efficiency ratio decreases. Power reduction of
E-mail address: vijaybhatkar@mmcoe.edu.in
[7]. The performance of split air conditioners with the evaporative
cooler shows reduction around 17% energy consumption and
energy efficiency ratio improved from 29 to 53% [8]. Energy saving
is observed with split air conditioning with evaporative cooler for
different weather conditions for 50 to 60 °C temperature. The rise
in atmospheric temperature increases power input to the compres-
sor due to increase in condenser temperature [9]. The comparative
performance of air cooled, water cooled and evaporative condenser
is studied and found that water cooled condenser increases the
cooling effect from 2.9% to 14.4% and the COP by 1.5 to 10.2% with
respect to water cooled condenser. Evaporative condenser cooling
is 31% more and the COP of the refrigeration system is increased by
14.3% as compared to the air cooled condenser [10]. Porous mate-
rial like cellulose is suitable for passing water and air for evapora-
tion of water [11]. The water changes the phase from liquid to
vapour at saturation pressure. The surrounding air temperature
decreases due to the absorption of water vapour. When the air is
completely saturated, relative humidity is 100% [12]. The exit tem-
perature from the cooling pad is decreased due to conversion of
sensible thermal energy into phase change energy [13]. For low rel-
ative humidity of incoming air, large quantity of water is evapo-
rated and drastic temperature reduces. The cooling capacity of
evaporator increases with the increased mass flow rate of air lead-

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.03.615
2214-7853/Ó 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 3rd International e-Conference on Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering and nanoTechnology.

Please cite this article as: V.W. Bhatkar, Determination of water loss for an adiabatic cooling of a fin fan water cooler, Materials Today: Proceedings, https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.matpr.2021.03.615
V.W. Bhatkar Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of experimental setup.

ing to decrease in efficiency [14]. An innovative evaporative cool-

ing system is designed, developed and compared in terms of tem-
perature, humidity and efficiency [15].

2. Materials and methods

Most of the people use adiabatic cooler in medium and low

income family group during summer situation in the world. As
the atmospheric air temperature increases, condensing tempera-
ture increases which reduces the performance of the thermal sys-
tem. Thus, air cooled condensers need more area than water cooled
condenser for same refrigeration capacity. In evaporative con-
denser, pad absorbs the water and air temperature drops produc-
ing cooling effect. The purpose of this research project is to
collect monthly water consumption data and compare with theo-
retical calculations made for water saving as per the temperature
range. In the hot and dry weather conditions, humidity reduces
below the comfort level as per comfort standards. This adverse
condition is exists around five months in summer with a load shed-
ding due to the less water available for power production from the
hydroelectric power plants.
Fig. 1 show the schematic diagram with the scanner, RTD,
humidity sensors and other measuring instruments. Scanner and
RTD sensors are used for hourly readings of dry bulb and wet bulb
temperatures, inflow and outflow water temperatures. The fin fan
cooler with cellulose pads is kept at certain height from ground.
Water flow meter is provided in make-up water line to measure
the water flow. The heater is placed in the tank to heat the water
as per temperature condition. The controllers are provided to con-
trol the heater and pump. The strainer is placed to remove the
dirt/contaminated particles. The pump is used to pump the water
from tank to reduce the air temperature. Due to the conduction
and convection heat transfer, water particles are evaporated and
dry cooled air is drawn out from fin fan cooler with the help of fan. Fig. 2. Saturation efficiency versus air velocity.

evaporative pads are studied in this paper. The main intension

3. Results and discussion
was to find the amount of theoretical water consumption for evap-
orative cooler with a specific pad material and thickness at differ-
During the summer, scarcity of water is observed every year in
ent ambient temperatures. For a specific ambient condition in hot
the world. Star Cooler and Condenser is company is interested to
and dry summer as inlet temperature of water at 36 °C, exit tem-
find the water loss consumption in this research work for fin fan
perature of water of 32 °C, volume flow rate of 1.071 m3/hr, pad
cooler. Air cooled, water cooled and evaporative condensers with
2
V.W. Bhatkar
thickness with 150 mm, pad facing area as 0.32 m2
(length  width = 0.8  0.4) and velocity as discharge/pad face area
of 3.35 m/s (1.071/0.32) in the fin fan cooler, theoretical water loss
calculations are made. Indian Society of Heating Refrigerating and
Air Conditioning Engineers (ISHRAE) has provided hourly weather
data since 1990 till date. Following sample reading is selected for
the calculation of water loss.
Inlet Condition: Dry bulb temp (tdb1) = 38 °C, Wet bulb temp
(twb1) = 21 °C from weather data. Thus, specific humidity (w1)
from psychrometric chart is 0.0088 kg/kg of dry air. To calculate
theoretically exit condition of air across the fin fan cooler, concept
of saturation efficiency is used as discussed in Munters [16]. Fig. 2
shows the saturation efficiency versus air velocity graph, provided
saturation efficiency of 78% at 3.35 m/s air velocity and 150 mm
pad thickness.
Outlet condition: Difference between tdb1-tdb2 = 38–21 = 17 °C.
From the saturation efficiency of evaporation, temperature
difference  efficiency = 17 (78/100) = 13.26 °C. Thus, tdb2 = 38–
13.26 = 24.74 °C = 25 °C. For 25 °C and 21 °C wet bulb temperature,
specific humidity (w2) = 0.0142 kg/kg of dry air from the psychro-
metric chart.
Difference of w1 and w2 is 0.0054 kg of water vapour/kg of dry
air and specific volume of air at inlet condition is 0.8927 m3/s and
finally water loss is estimated as-
Water loss = (w2-w1) specific volume  volume flow rate = 0.
0054  0.8927  1.071 = 0.00516 m3/hr. Water loss per hour is
estimated to be 5.2 L/hour for the above specified temperature
conditions.
4. Conclusions
The evaporative cooler with the proper pad thickness and mate-
rial is important criteria in the design of cooler. The water loss is
estimated for the fin fan cooler in summer and found to be 5.2 L
per hour. This is the useful information for customers as well as
companies manufacturing coolers to find out the total loss of water
throughout the summer. The information about the water loss con-
sumption in coolers is useful to select suitable cooling system. Eva-
porative coolers with different pad materials, thickness can be
compared and modifications can be made.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan-
cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared
to influence the work reported in this paper.
Materials Today: Proceedings xxx (xxxx) xxx
Acknowledgements
The author is thankful to Star Cooler and Condensers Private
Limited for sponsoring this research work. Author is also thankful
to Indian Society of Heating Refrigerating and Air Conditioning
Engineers (ISHRAE) New Delhi for providing financial support
and weather data. The work on combined flow evaporator con-
denser is financially supported by Dassault Systemes Foundation
with the ID, DSF: 40/2020.
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