Evaluating the potential use of direct evaporative cooling in Australia: Fid-Bau Portal

Evaluating the potential use of direct evaporative cooling in Australia

Guan, Lisa / Bennett, Michael / Bell, John

Highlights • The potential use of direct evaporative cooling for Australian climate is very significant. • The need for hybrid cooling is less than 5% in most of cities if humidity control is not required. • The influence from characteristic of building and associated cooling systems is significant. • Major design factors include available control of humidity, indoor air speed and air change.

Abstract Greenhouse gas emissions and associated global climate change are a significant and growing concern for the world community. In order to improve building energy efficiency, the use of evaporative cooling systems is attracting growing attention. Using a climate assessment tool, the potential use of direct evaporative coolers over different Australian climates is evaluated. It is found that overall, the potential use of direct evaporative cooling is very significant in Australian climates. Among all the eight capital cities across Australia, except for Darwin, the need of hybrid cooling for other cities is found to be insignificant, and is less than 5% if appropriate air circulation is provided on hot/warm days. It is also found that the potential use of evaporative cooling can be significantly influenced by a change in the applications or design parameters. In Brisbane, it is estimated that with an increase of sensible cooling load from 30W/m² to 40W/m² in the conditioned space, the requirement in hours of hybrid cooling can increase significantly, from 4.06% to 14.89%.