Direct evaporative passive cooling of building. A comparison amid simplified simulation models based on experimental data

• Comparison of 6 different methods for estimating outlet temperature in PDEC systems.
• Comparison between monitored and calculated data using four different monitored dataset.
• A new monitoring campaign about a passive downdraught evaporative tower.
• Calculation of the capacity of each monitored tower in covering the Wet Bulb Depression (WBD).
• Introduction of a reference value for fixing the regression coefficient to conveniently use it in EnergyPlus.

Different simplified simulation models of a Passive Downdraught Evaporative Cooling tower (PDEC) were compared by using experimental data. Among these, a series of tests on a Passive Downdraught Evaporative Cooling tower (PDEC) were carried out at the SyTIn (Systems for Technology Innovation) Laboratory of the Department of Architecture and Design, Politecnico di Torino. In addition, other monitored databases were taken from literature and used as input data for the simplified models. The collected inlet airflow data were used for calculating predicted outlet airflow values by using four equations and a software from literature.The comparison of those outlet airflow data allowed for assessing the effectiveness and the accuracy of the analysed simplified methods, which are also used for simulating the PDEC tower in several dynamic simulation software such as DesignBuilder coupled with EnergyPlus. The presented results could help designers in choosing amid different calculation models.