Sustainable cooling system for Kuwait hot climate combining diurnal radiative cooling and indirect evaporative cooling system

Abstract

This study investigates the performance of a hybrid passive cooling system that combines a hydronic radiative cooling (RC) panel integrated with a cross-flow dew-point indirect evaporative cooler DPIEC equipped with a closed cycle water reclamation using an air water-harvesting (AWH) system. The study was performed on a typical residential house located in the hot and mostly dry climate of Kuwait. The hourly cooling load of the house was calculated using the transient simulation software TRNSYS. A mathematical model integrating the hydronic RC panel and the DPIEC models was developed and simulated to predict the system operation over the cooling season. The integrated hybrid system’s performance was compared with two systems: i) a cooling system that uses the DPIEC unit alone, and ii) the conventional mechanical cooling system. The comparison focused on the RC system’s role in reducing the DPIEC unit’s water consumption and AWH system size as well as the system’s electrical energy savings in comparison with conventional air conditioning system.

It was found that the use of the RC panel’s power during nighttime and daytime reduced the water consumption of the DPIEC unit by an average of 44.2 % in comparison to that of a DPIEC unit operating alone during the cooling season. Moreover, a significant reduction of 53.4 % in the electrical energy consumption was achieved by hybrid system compared to a typical AC system during the entire cooling season in Kuwait.