Objective
The conventional air conditioning systems are neither sustainable nor environment-friendly. Evaporative cooling utilizes an ambient energy (latent heat of water evaporation) to perform air conditioning of buildings, and is therefore a potential replacement of existing systems. However, evaporative cooling has several technical difficulties that impede its wide application. Direct evaporative cooling adds moisture to room air which causes unpleasant thermal comfort. Indirect evaporative cooling limits supply air temperature to some degrees above the wet bulb of the outdoor air, which is too high to perform air conditioning of buildings. The dew point (evaporative) cooling breaks the limit of wet bulb, and allows the supply air to be cooled to a level below the wet bulb and above the dew point of the outdoor air. However, the existing exchanger for dew point cooling is still less efficient to perform air conditioning of buildings in Europe regions. The proposed research aims to optimise the design of the exchanger in terms of its material, structure and geometric sizes, and to develop a new polygonal-sheets-stacked exchager. The new exchanger will be 15 to 35% higher in cooling effectiveness that allows the dew point cooling become a widely applicable system for building air conditioning in most regions of Europe. The project objectives include (1) Optimisation of the exchanger design, (2) Construction and testing of the exchangers, and (3) Economic, environment and local acceptance analyses. The fellowship will benefit the applicant researcher in terms of enhanced research ability and integration with host institution. It will also benefit the host institution in terms of knowledge transfer and strengthening international collaboration. The project will benefit to EU in terms of reduced greenhouse gas emission and fossil fuel energy consumption, growth in economy, improved life quality, as well as enhanced industry competitiveness.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2007-4-2-IIF
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
MC-IIF - International Incoming Fellowships (IIF)Coordinator
LE1 9BH Leicester
United Kingdom