Improving Louvers with Indirect Evaporative Cooling as Heat Exchanger: Hot Sub-humid Climate

Evaporative cooling has been proved as one of the most efficiency strategies to cool down air temperature. In this paper, the performance of a device that combines the sun protection with fresh ventilation using evaporative cooling is presented. This strategy has been used as heat exchanger in vertical set up, but this configuration precludes the solar protection. The experimental trial was taken in Colima, Mexico, where the climate is classified as hot sub-humid Aw0, according to Koppen. In the experimental stage, two equal devices were compared. One of the remained as control and the other one using water to apply the indirect evaporative cooling as a case. The maximum difference of temperature between the entrance air and the exit was of 8 K degrees in the experimental cell versus 5.5 K degrees of the reference cell. Indirect evaporative cooling strategy improves the reduction of heat exchange around the device. This allows to used louvers to block solar radiation and to pre-cold the air before introducing it to the space.