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Swamp coolers actually reduce the temperature of the air. At the expense of increasing humidity. Generally for residential units that's okay since they work bes
by Gibbon1 6y ago
Swamp coolers actually reduce the temperature of the air. At the expense of increasing humidity. Generally for residential units that's okay since they work best in places where the weather is both hot and low humidity. Humidification is seen as mostly an advantage.
Not a HVAC expert but I think larger commercial systems work that way you describe. Rather than describe it poorly, here's a link to manufacturers explainer for their evaporative cooling towers.
https://www.evapco.com/technologies/evaporative-cooling-101 https://www.evapco.com/technologies/evaporative-cooling-101
I think these are often used to argument the condenser on commercial HVAC systems.
- ladberg 6y agoSorry yep I was a bit wrong on the swamp coolers. The water can cool the air through conduction down to the temperature of the tap, but the actual evaporation process warms it. (I may still have it wrong, please correct me) In the link you sent, it looks like even the direct evaporative cooler is effectively working as a heat exchanger because it's cooling water down (not air) to be sent elsewhere. This can cool below the temperature of the tap and doesn't add any humidity. That's basically what I want so maybe I was using the wrong terminology in the post, but it's still different than a swamp cooler.
- Gibbon1 6y agoI've been trying to figure out how to explain this. But basically what's going on thermodynamically with a swamp cooler is a classic adiabatic process, jargon for the total energy doesn't change. When you evaporate water into dry air. The total energy doesn't change[1]. But it take energy to evaporate water. So where does the energy come from? By reducing the temperature of the air. [1] I think the entropy increases which is why it's favorable.