Authors
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to test the use of an evaporative air cooler to cool the roof of a building. It was hoped that this would reduce the temperature inside the building and the cooling load as well when a compressor air conditioning unit is installed.
Evaporative cooling is cheap and only uses a fraction of the power that compressor units do. Furthermore its cooling effect increases with the rise in temperature and drop in humidity, conditions that prevail in large parts of Iraq including Baghdad.
The test included setting up a thermally insulated compartment above a room inside the campus of the University of Technology. The compartment was cooled by an evaporative cooler. The walls of the room were insulated by adding a 2cm layer of Styrofoam as well as a 10cm air cavity. The readings were taken after three days of operation.
The results showed that the combination of roof cooling and wall insulation resulted in a 5.5oC drop in inside temperature. Further calculations showed that this would reduce the cooling load on a compressor air condition by around 38%.
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