ENERGY CONSERVATION IN COOLING SYSTEMS

Abstract

With the increase in cost of conventional energy resources and its fast depletion attracted researchers, industrialists and policy planners towards energy conservation. This turn in attitudetinitiated analysis and discussions over age old technical practices, generally adopted in industries without putting much head into it. One such practise is water cooling. Whenever a moderate coolant s necessary, designers always prefer water as a cooling media due to its availability in abundance, low cost ,and non toxicity. But the rise in cost )f water , its processing cost, and cooling cost air has emerged as one of he strongest competitor for water. Development of heat pump which got momentum due to the energy crisis , has developed into such a level which can be useful in conserving low level energy. In the present work ,the above ideas have been coined and mingle together, with an aim to analyse operating domains in which air cooling or water cooling , and air cooling with heat pump e water cooling with heat pump will be feasible. It is observed that for high heat loads and high temperature differ-ences between hot and cold fluid economy favours air cooling. It is further observed that the inclusion of heat pump does not help much in improving the economy in general. However analysis shows that heat pumps can be economically used for conserving low grade energy , when demand for its upgrading is not high..