A global optimization method for evaporative cooling systems based on the entransy theory

Fang Yuan and Qun Chen

Energy, 2012, vol. 42, issue 1, 181-191

Abstract: Evaporative cooling technique, one of the most widely used methods, is essential to both energy conservation and environment protection. This contribution introduces a global optimization method for indirect evaporative cooling systems with coupled heat and mass transfer processes based on the entransy theory to improve their energy efficiency. First, we classify the irreversible processes in the system into the heat transfer process, the coupled heat and mass transfer process and the mixing process of waters in different branches, where the irreversibility is evaluated by the entransy dissipation. Then through the total system entransy dissipation, we establish the theoretical relationship of the user demands with both the geometrical structures of each heat exchanger and the operating parameters of each fluid, and derive two optimization equation groups focusing on two typical optimization problems. Finally, an indirect evaporative cooling system is taken as an example to illustrate the applications of the newly proposed optimization method. It is concluded that there exists an optimal circulating water flow rate with the minimum total thermal conductance of the system. Furthermore, with different user demands and moist air inlet conditions, it is the global optimization, other than parametric analysis, will obtain the optimal performance of the system.

Keywords: Evaporation; Energy; Heat transfer; Optimization; Entransy dissipation; Global design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544212002733
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:42:y:2012:i:1:p:181-191

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2012.03.070

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().