Enhancement of Performance and Energy Efficiency of Air Conditioning System Using Evaporatively Cooled Condensers

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the reduction of energy consumption in a split air-conditioning system employing evaporative cooling of ambient air flowing over the condenser coil. Direct evaporative cooling is employed at the air-cooled condenser of a split air-conditioning system to cool the air flowing over the condenser coils. Different ambient conditions of air were simulated using a heater to mimic typical high temperature environments. The effect of the cooling pad thickness on the performance of the system was investigated by varying the pad thickness from 5 cm to 15 cm in step size of 5 cm. Result shows that the temperature drop experienced by the air is dependent on the thickness of the pad, as well as the condition of the inlet air to the pad. Conditions of the exit air from the pad shows that evaporative cooling can be employed as a stand-alone method for cooling of data centers, with adequate humidity control systems in place, or its output can be used to augment the performance of existing mechanical cooling systems. A decrease in power consumption of the unit is observed, with concomitant increase in coefficient of performance (COP). In addition, results obtained show that up to 44% increase in COP, and a 20% decrease in power consumption can be achieved by employing evaporative cooling. Additionally, the COP was found to increase by about 4% for every 1°C drop in refrigerant condensing temperature. Moreover, a 1°C drop in ambient air temperature causes a drop of 0.6°C in condensing temperature of the refrigerant.