Hello MontyJ,
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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.
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Yes.. Heat is a form of energy, and you cant eliminate energy, it can only change form. So it stands to reason that the heat energy needs to go somewhere. But were does it go? I can't explain that at this point, and I don't claim to be a scientist. I also have a good friend that has been working in the heating and air conditioning field for over 20 years, and he services swamp coolers on a weekly basis. I have asked him where that heat energy goes, and he can't explain it either. I have thought about e-mailing that question to some university professors, but haven't done that yet. You asked me if I think it would work, and yes I do. Otherwise I never would have mentioned it, or planed to build it. I have been planing to build a working model for a couple of years. But when I had the money it was winter, and I couldn't test it. Now that it's summer again I need to make it a priority or it will be winter again soon.
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If it is evaporation, then the nutes will be evaporating if that is the media I am trying to cool.
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I think I have confused you. There are two separate reservoirs in the reverse swamp cooler design. One is the
nutrient reservoir, the other is the reverse swamp cooler reservoir. You don't run the nutrient water through the reverse swamp cooler. That would cause problems. You can use the reverse swamp cooler water to cool the nutrient solution two ways. Either by pumping it through coils that are submerged in the nutrient solution (or vice versa) to act like a radiator. Or by placing the nutrient reservoir directly in the reverse swamp cooler water. Something like placing a smaller trash can (used as the nutrient reservoir) inside a larger trash can (used as the reverse swamp cooler reservoir). Thus cooling the nutrient solution by direct contact with the surface area of the nutrient solution container. The same way geothermal energy works by placing the reservoir in the ground (surrounding it with a cool surface that wicks away heat).
Yes, your right, the water in a swamp cooler does evaporate. That's why another term for swamp cooler is called evaporative cooler. I forget exactly, but I think it evaporated at a rate of something around one gallon of water per hour in the swamp cooler I built that I used as an example earlier. A simple float valve connected to a water line can be used to maintain a specific water level. That way you don't need to keep an eye on the water level. That's what they use in commercially built swamp coolers to make sure it never runs dry. You can get a float valve here for about $4 to $8. You also want to use a inline calcium filter (here that's about $10-$15), otherwise you will get a lot of lime scale buildup.
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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.
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That's exactly why I said that you'll need to dump ice in it multiple times daily. And that will take a lot of time, space in the freezer, as well as energy, and everything in the freezer starts to thaw. I've done it myself so I know exactly how much of a pain it is. In fact I'm doing it right now for my pepper plant. It takes about 1/2 gallon of ice twice a day for a 7 gallon reservoir.