What is Evaporative Cooling?
Evaporative cooling generally refers to the use of adiabatic cooling systems designed to cool air. Similar to the mass transfer that cools water in a cooling tower, the evaporation of water in evaporative media removes heat from an airstream and lowers the temperature of the air. This process is used in air cooling systems in factories, greenhouses, poultry houses, and in air inlets to gas turbines, power plants, diesel engines, and air-cooled heat exchangers. Major cooling tower manufacturers are now offering adiabatic coolers and hybrid coolers that harness the efficiency of evaporative media to improve the overall efficiency of traditional dry coolers.
Exploring Evaporative Media
Whereas the media in a cooling tower is typically a polymer material (PVC is most common), evaporative media is usually a cellulose-based product – generally a paper substrate that is coated in resins and other modifiers to add desired properties, such as stiffness and flame retardance. What cooling tower fills and evaporative media have in common are their base design of corrugated sheets that are bonded together to provide surface area for air and water interaction with the corrugations creating passageways for air and waterflow through the media. Because of its wicking properties, paper-type media delivers great evaporative efficiency.