THE ENERGY AND EXERGY ANALYSIS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF COUNTER-FLOW HEAT AND MASS EXCHANGER FOR M-CYCLE INDIRECT EVAPORATIVE COOLING

The dew point indirect evaporative cooling achieved through Maisotsenko cycle is a complicated thermodynamic process. For further understanding of the heat and mass transfer occurred in a dew point indirect evaporative air cooler with Maisotsenko-cycle counter-flow configuration, the paper presents a novel mathematical model that combined the law of energy conservation and the principle of the thermodynamic theory. The model was used to carry out the parametric study of the dew point air cooler under various inlet air temperature and relative humidity. Through the combined analysis of energy and exergy of the target indirect evaporative cooling system, it is found that both the inlet air temperature and relative humidity have an important effect on the thermal performance and thermodynamic performance of the heat and mass exchanger. The high temperature environment helps to get better thermal performance and thermodynamic performance. It has been showed in this paper that the best thermal performance does not correspond to the best thermodynamic performance. Thus, the energy and exergy analysis should be implemented simultaneously for the optimization of the process to get the best thermal performance at permissible level of thermodynamic cost.