Middle Saudi Arabia has weather conditions where the temperature is high in summer with low humidity. Conventional air conditioning systems operated by a vapor compression cycle are not economical because of the high electrical power consumption. Therefore, evaporative cooling through evaporative coolers is one of the best and most economical solutions. The present study experimentally investigates the factors affecting the performance of evaporative coolers. Pad materials and airflow rate are the main variables to investigate the evaporative cooler's performance in terms of saturation effectiveness, pressure drop across the pads, and coefficient of performance (COP). Pads material are the local palm tree "Nakheel" waste that are leaflet, leaf base, bulb, and roots. The maximum COP of the cooling system in the case of bulb pad material is 80% more than that of leaflet pad material. The saturation effectiveness of the bulb pad was a maximum which is 61.93% at an airflow of 2.25 m/s, which is more than two times that of the saturation effectiveness of the leaflet pad. The pressure drop across the bulb pad is almost 2.5 times to 9.5 times than that of leaflet pad. Results show that bulb pad performance best, whereas the leaflet pad material has the lowest performance in terms of pressure drop, saturation effectiveness, and COP.
Keywords: Air conditioning systems; Airflow rate; Evaporative cooler; Pad materials; Pressure drop; Saturation effectiveness.
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