2011年7月27日星期三

A Guide to Evaporative Coolers

Splash some water on your face on a hot day in the summer and you will immediately feel cooler. That's evaporative cooling working. An evaporative cooler works on the same principle - evaporating water provides cooling - but they combine water evaporation with air movement to cool our homes.

Evaporative coolers are sometimes called "swamp coolers," probably because they add humidity to the air, making it more "swamp like." The concept of evaporative cooling has been around for years, when people living in arid climates used to hang damp clothes in their windows at night, knowing the breeze blowing through the window would help cool the room.

How Do They Work?

While evaporative coolers have moved beyond the "hang a cloth in the window" stage, the principle remains the same. Nowadays an evaporative cooler usually consists of a large box containing a fan surrounded by a wet pad, mounted on the roof or side of a house. A pump circulates water to keep the pad wet and the fan blows air through the pad. The damp (but cooler) air is blown into the house driving the hotter inside air out through open windows or vents.

According the US Department of Energy, the difference between the inside air temperature and the cooled air can be expected to be in the range of 15 to 20 degrees, but the difference can be as high as 40 degrees in certain conditions. As an added bonus, evaporative coolers provide incremental cooling effect, since the constant air movement caused by the cooler's fan actually makes a room's temperature feel even cooler.

Coolers versus Air Conditioners

While both evaporative coolers and air conditioners aim to do the same thing - cool our homes - evaporative coolers are definitely low tech and unlike air conditioners in many ways. To start with, evaporative coolers add humidity to the air, while air conditioners remove humidity. They don't use any refrigerants (like Freon) so they aren't potentially damaging to the atmosphere. Evaporative coolers provide a constant supply of fresh air, while an air conditioner operates best in a closed environment and re-circulates the same air over and over. Air conditioners also cost substantially more to install and maintain than evaporative coolers, and use three to four more times electricity to operate.

Sizing an Evaporative Cooler

The size of an evaporative cooler is measured in cubic feet per minute (cfm), or the number of cubic feet of air a cooler can move in a minute. Household units are commonly available in sizes from 3000 cfm to 25000 cfm. Manufacturers recommend that a properly sized unit should be able to change the air in a house 20 to 40 times in an hour. You can determine the proper size unit for your home by calculating the cubic feet in your home (i.e., 1500 square foot house with 8 foot ceilings is 12,000 cubic feet) and dividing that number by 2. So in this case, the 12,000 cubic foot house will require a 6000 cfm evaporative cooler.

Benefits of Evaporative Cooling

There are a number of economic and environmental benefits to using an evaporative cooler. For example:
  • Evaporative coolers use substantially less electricity than an air conditioner for the same sized house (some estimates are as much as 75 percent less).
  • Evaporative coolers use simple technology and as a result are much cheaper to buy, install and maintain. Plus, they operate on regular household current so they don't require a dedicated circuit.
  • In dry climates, adding moisture to the air can help keep both furniture and fabrics from drying out.
  • The moist pads in the cooler act as air filters, helping keep dust and pollen out of the house while providing a constant supply of fresh air into the home.
  • Evaporative coolers are even available in small sized window and portable units that can be used to cool an individual room.

Sounds great! Why don't we use them everywhere?

  • Unfortunately, evaporative coolers work best when the air they are pulling in is dry. As the humidity in the outside air increases, the effectiveness of evaporative cooling goes down. In reality, evaporative coolers work best only in certain areas such as the southwest or where the climate is arid and the air is dry. In areas with higher humidity, evaporative coolers aren't really an option since they'd actually be adding moisture to the air and there would be no cooling effect.
  • Another drawback to evaporative coolers is they use a substantial amount of water (up to 15 gallons per day) to provide their cooling effect. In dry areas, this consumption can put a real strain on water supplies.

In spite of the fact that evaporative coolers may not be a cooling option for all of us, there is no doubt that they do provide energy savings and reduce the risk of damage to the environment. So even if we all can't use an evaporative cooler, we all do benefit from the energy conservation and environmental protection they provide.

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