I am probably have to build me a test swamp cooler to see how it really works...being from Missouri and all, LoL.
I am not hung up on BTU's, watts, or tons. But heat exchange rates can be defined by those numbers, and bottom line this is a heat exchange issue. If you start with 100F air and 100F water and simply blow the air across the water at some rate, you claim both the air and the water get cooled down.
Where does the heat exchange come from? Just the evaporation process itself? In simplest terms, heat is being withdrawn out of the water if the water gets colder. Where is that heat going? It ain't going into the air, as the air is colder as well, right? If it is evaporation, then the nutes will be evaporating if that is the media I am trying to cool.
I've already admitted I don't know much about how swamp coolers, reverse swamp coolers, etc work, no need to swing the 2x4 in that direction again.
My plan is to insulate the buckets and reservoir as well as I can. I may move the reservoir closer to the buckets to eliminate as much connecting hose as possible and wrap them as well right up to the bucket itself.
At that point I need to calculate cooling needs. Using ice bottles, I will see what kind of heat transfers happen with the system running normally with the insulation in place. This is not an ideal way to do it, but I need to have a better handle on the insulation effects on the system, then I can start looking what it will take to keep the reservoir at some ideal temp.
One thing I noticed is that most online calculations deal only with a given volume of liquid to be cooled, and that is simply recirculated until the desired temp is reached. There is seldom any thought about every cycle, in my case one cycle per hour, injecting NEW heat into the reservoir for. That new heat load has to be handled before the next cycle starts, which is only 30 minutes. That is why I went with the worst case of asking the 'experts' how to cool the water 'real time' and that is how they (two separate resources) came up with pretty much the same ton-btu-watt requirements to do it.
With some very thick insulation on my system, hopefully the energy to keep it at 65F-70F or so will not be too overwhelming.
Again, thanks for your ideas. I learn a little more with every read!
Monty
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