Numerical and experimental investigation of a novel configuration of indirect evaporative cooler with internal baffles

Highlights: • The novel configuration of indirect evaporative cooler with internal baffles is investigated. • The numerical results are validated against experimental data and showed good agreement. • The novel configuration is a better configuration to investigate the thermal comfort conditions. • The recommended optimal working to cooling air ratio in novel configurations should be 0.3. - Abstract: In this study, five configurations for a novel indirect evaporative cooler with internal baffles in the dry air channel (Type A, Type B, Type C, Type D and Type E) were proposed to determine a better configuration of indirect evaporative cooler. The discretization of the governing equations of mass and heat transfer by using the finite difference method and solved by method of iterative in MATLAB. The numerical results of these simulations are validated by present experimental data and published experimental data, which resulted great agreement between numerical results and experimental data. Results show that under these five configurations, for change the inlet air conditions, the outlet cooling air temperature decreases with increases the number of baffles, the percentage decreases about 15.1%, 18.9%, 20% and 20.5% for Type B, Type C, Type D and Type E compared to Type A respectively, whereas the average wet bulb effectiveness of Type B, Type C, Type D and Type E are around 33.3%, 40.3%, 42.3% and 43% higher than that of the Type A respectively. For change the inlet air velocity from 1.5 to 5.5 m/s, the outlet cooling air temperature varies over ranges of 21.3–27.3 °C, 18.4–23.3 °C, 18.2–22.75 °C, 18–22.6 °C and 17.9–22.5 °C for Type A, Type B, Type C, Type D and Type E respectively. The results showed that a novel configuration of indirect evaporative cooler with internal baffles is a better configuration to investigate the condition of thermal comfort.