Experimental and Numerical Study on Performance of Indirect Evaporative Cooler with Baffles

Indirect evaporative cooler (IEC) is a system that utilizes the latent heat of water evaporation to lower air temperature. This system offers the advantage of low energy consumption, eliminating the need for a compressor while maintaining the air's absolute humidity. However, the cooling performance is low. Although IEC performance can be improved by installing baffles, there is limited information on the influence of the baffle installation location and geometric conditions on the performance of IEC. Therefore, in this study, experiments were conducted on four IECs with varying baffle installation locations. Additionally, a numerical model was developed for the IEC with baffles only in the dry channel as it exhibited the best performance in the experiments. Using the developed model, a parameter study of IEC performance was performed. The experimental results confirmed that, compared to an IEC without a baffle, an IEC with baffles installed only in the dry channel resulted in increases in wet-bulb and dew-point effectiveness of approximately 38.53 and 39.82%, respectively. In addition, a parameter study showed that an increase in height and width as well as a decrease in pitch improved the IEC performance.