In the sweltering heats of summer, many people flock to a nearby beach or pool to find some cooling relief, while others are happy to stay at their climate-controlled offices to escape the heat. And while work at the factory continues, many factory workers find themselves out of luck, as production facilities rarely have a system in place to control for the indoor climate. This is a problem, as inside temperatures within production facilities can quickly rise to unhealthy and uncomfortable levels during summer.
At the words ‘climate control’, most of us will instantaneously think of mechanical cooling such as Air Condition. There are, however, other, more sustainable, methods to control for the indoor climate. In this blog, we discuss one of these methods, namely two-stage evaporative cooling, and elaborate on the benefits of this cooling method.
Evaporative cooling explained
Evaporative cooling, also known as adiabatic cooling, is a natural process of air cooling down, most commonly seen in the formation of clouds. When used as a means to control the indoor climate, an evaporative cooling system relies on that same natural principle of water evaporation through which the air is cooled down to a comfortable level.
For more than 4500 years, evaporative cooling systems have been used to create a comfortable indoor environment. The oldest evaporative cooling systems found consisted of wet rags or porous clay vessels filled with water placed that were placed in front or beneath an air inlet to create a cooling effect. Ancient murals from around 2500 BC depict an even more primitive evaporative cooling system with slaves fanning jars of water to cool the rooms of royalty. Nowadays, modern evaporative cooling systems still work on the same age-old principle using modern technology.
In advanced two-stage evaporative cooling systems, hot outside air passes through an air-to-water heat exchanger, a process that adds no moisture to the air. Secondly, the air passes through wet cooling pads, which cools the air down even further. The cooled down air is then blown into the building, adding only a little moisture to the air, to create a comfortable indoor climate.
Benefits of evaporative cooling
As evaporative cooling needs only a little bit of water, and even less electricity, it is a highly sustainable and energy-efficient cooling method to create a comfortable and healthy indoor climate in production facilities. In comparison with traditional climate control, extensive energy savings can be reached with evaporative cooling. Furthermore, unlike mechanical cooling, evaporative cooling does not recirculate the warm, polluted indoor air, but ventilates fresh and filtered air into a room or building. As a result, the indoor air quality substantially improves.
Want to know more on the extensive benefits of evaporative cooling? On this page, you can find all there is to know:
