Evaporative cooling efficiency according to climate conditions

The present paper evaluates Evaporative Cooling (EC) strategy efficiency, in which water is used as coolant. Based on this premise, the EC is a very interesting strategy to take into account in greenhouse gas reduction. Spain, as a European country and Kyoto protocol signatory, must reduce its emissions. The research is centered on Evaporative Cooling potential and its efficiency in the Spanish country. Starting from the climatic geographic classification considered by the Spanish Building Efficiency Rules & Regulations, a first approach to comfort potential improvement is done for the Spanish country using EC strategies. These results are the first step to evaluate EC strategies efficiency according to a geographic location. In a second step, it is calculated hourly comfort improvement for each geographic location using EC during daytime hours, when cooling is needed. With the detailed hourly evaluation it is obtained comfort improvements percentages and it is evaluated which type of EC strategy is needed in each case. (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of APAAS