| dc.description.abstract | This paper reported a review based study into the Indirect Evaporative Cooling (IEC)
technology, which was undertaken from a variety of aspects including background, history,
current status, concept, standardisation, system configuration, operational mode, research and
industrialisation, market prospect and barriers, as well as the future focuses on R&D and
commercialisation. This review work indicated that the IEC technology has potential to be an
alternative to conventional mechanical vapour compression refrigeration systems to take up the
air conditioning duty for buildings. Owing to the continuous progress in technology innovation,
particularly the M-cycle development and associated heat and mass transfer and material
optimisation, the IEC systems have obtained significantly enhanced cooling performance over
those the decade ago, with the wet-bulb effectiveness of greater than 90% and energy efficiency
ratio (EER) up to 80. Structure of the IEC heat and mass exchanger varied from flat-plate-stack,
tube, heat pipe and potentially wave-form. Materials used for making the exchanger elements
(plate/tube) included fibre sheet with the single side water proofing, aluminium plate/tube with
single side wicked setting (grooved, meshed, toughed etc), and ceramic plate/tube with single
side water proofing. Counter-current water flow relevant to the primary air is considered the
favourite choice; good distribution of the water stream across the wet surface of the exchanger
plate (tube) and adequate (matching up the evaporation) control of the water flow rate are
critical to achieving the expected system performance. | en_US |
