Preliminary Investigations on a Novel Rotating Media Liquid-air Contacting Device without Liquid Pool

Contacting device is a system that bring air and water in contact with each other in evaporative cooling systems while it brings liquid desiccant and air in contact with each other in case of liquid desiccant-based air conditioning systems. They should provide high surface area density for heat and mass transfer and also provide high heat and mass transfer rates in smaller volume with lower electrical power consumption. A novel design of contacting device is presented in this work, where plastic porous cylindrical contact media is used and unlike previous designs, the liquid pool in lower part of the device is eliminated. This would help to utilize the contact surfaces more effectively and reduce power consumption of motor used for rotation of the media as compared to earlier designs in literature. The novel contacting device and the experimental set up were developed and preliminary testing was done. The contact media is 230 mm long with diameter equal to 145 mm, providing surface area density equal to 445 m2/m3. In a preliminary experiment, the device provided evaporative cooling rate up to 288 W and effectiveness of 33.1%. The performance can be further improved by increasing mass flow rate of water for better wetting, increasing surface density by decreasing porosity and increasing path length of air.