Performance Studies on Evaporative Cooling Systems Using Coconut Coir as Sustainable Renewable Material

Abstract

The demand for food products has increased due to the increase in population, and it is estimated that post-harvest losses have been significant in developing countries. The post-harvest losses can be reduced by following best practices and maintaining low temperatures in the storage unit. The productivity and yield of livestock can be increased by maintaining a low temperature. The cooling system used in this application should be cheap, easily available, and have a low operating cost. The evaporating cooling system (ECS) has been one of the cheapest cooling systems, and a two-stage ECS consisting of indirect and direct cooling can be used in hot and humid conditions. The conventional pad used in ECS can be replaced with natural fibers as a sustainable alternative material to reduce operating costs. In this work, coconut coir has been used as renewable, sustainable, and biodegradable cooling pad material. Experiments have been conducted by varying the fan speed to analyze its performance. The experimental results with coconut coir as an alternative to the celdex pad show that the cooling effect produced by the coconut coir is comparable to celdex pad. There is no significant change in pressure drop when operated with celdex and celdex+coconut coir at all speeds. However, in the latter case, there was a slight increase in power consumption and a decrease in efficiency. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) work using the software Ansys 19.2 has been a promising method for designing a new layout. From experimental and CFD results, it has been observed that the coconut coir can be used as a substitute for the expensive conventionally used celdex pad.
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