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Masters Thesis

A novel wall cooling technique for houses in warm dry climates

The purpose of this graduate project was to analyze the effectiveness of a novel wall cooling technique for houses in warm dry climates. The technique uses the exterior walls of the house as the conditioning system for cooling instead of the traditional air conditioning system which blows cooled air directly into the room or living spaces. The novel wall cooling technique uses cooling processes similar to that of a swamp cooler. For this project, three configurations were analyzed for implementation of the novel wall cooling technique. They are: (1) basic wall cooling configuration, (2) combined "swamp cooler" and the "basic wall cooling" configuration, and (3) duct configuration. The basic �wall-cooling configuration involves introducing hot, dry air and water spray directly into the cavity or gap of the wail. The mixture of hot, dry air and water spray undergoes thermodynamic processes, which resulted in a room temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. This represents a reduction in temperature of about 25 degrees with respect to the outside temperature which was assumed to be i 05�F. The second configuration is a combination of the basic wall cooling configuration as described above and a real "swamp cooler". This technique involves pre-cooling and humidifying the hot dry air first with a real "swamp cooler" and then introducing this swamp cooler-cooled and humidified air into the cavity of a wall. Inside the wall cavity, the swamp cooler output is again mixed with a water spray. This method resulted in further decrease of the house's temperature by another 5 degrees with respect to that initially obtained from the basic wall-cooling configuration of the first analysis. The third analysis was based on using non-circular tubes or "duct" configurations. This was accomplished because the inside cavity of a wall is essentially a duct. Similar to a duct, a wall has a rectangular cross section with two narrow edges enclosed by wall frames and its width are enclosed by an exterior and interior wall materials. Using the "duct" principles for the analysis provided the flexibility to vary the physical dimensions of the duct. The walls were then configured to fit the duct. Similar to the technique of analysis number two, the hot, dry air was also pre-cooled and humidified before introducing it into the duct. This method not only made calculation of the corresponding heat transfer rates simpler but also provided the same results as that of the second analysis. Overall, the analysis results indicate that the "novel wall cooling technique" conditioning system can cool a house comfortably between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit when the outside temperature is at or about 105 degrees Fahrenheit. For this reason, the "novel wall cooling technique" concept should be considered as an alternative to the traditional high energy consuming air conditioning system for cooling houses in warm, dry climates.

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