Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan40
When I was a kid, I remember water, radiator and fan coolers being called "Swamp Coolers." Don't know why.
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I am not exactly sure why they call them that since they are used in areas where swamps don't exist. Very low humidity is required. You see them in Arizona. The idea is to spray water onto some kind of heat transfer unit (radiator?) that has the thermal transport medium inside of it. Water evaporation removes heat from the system making the the thermal tranport medium cooler. That medium is pumped inside to another radiator where air is blown through it to cool the air... and so on. I hear they get quite nasty after a while (algea, etc). Maybe thats why they call them swamp coolers. You can recognize them because folks put them on top of their houses and they look like big boxes on stilts.
The key is very low humidity environments which allows you to take advantage of the energy consumed (from the transport medium) during evaporation.
Mike