Evaporative refrigeration (also known as evaporative cooling) achieves cooling by absorbing heat through the natural evaporation of water, eliminating the need for traditional compression refrigeration cycles and thus offering significant energy-saving advantages. Its energy-saving principles and performance are mainly reflected in the following aspects:
Utilizing the latent heat of phase change: Water absorbs a large amount of latent heat of vaporization (approximately 2500 kJ/kg) during evaporation, directly extracting heat from the air without consuming electricity to drive the compressor.
Using water as a refrigerant: It avoids the use of chemical refrigerants such as Freon, eliminating the high energy consumption of the compressor and causing no environmental pollution.
Driving force is the dry-bulb/wet-bulb temperature difference: It fully utilizes the dry-bulb/wet-bulb temperature difference in the natural environment as the cooling power, resulting in extremely high efficiency in dry regions.
In arid regions (such as Xinjiang and Gansu), indirect evaporative cooling systems can save 80%–90% more energy than traditional mechanical refrigeration air conditioning.
Direct evaporative cooling air conditioners (such as eco-friendly air conditioners and fan evaporators) consume only 1/8–1/10 of the energy of traditional air conditioners.
Evaporative condensing air conditioners ("energy-saving air conditioners") save 35%–50% more energy than air-cooled systems and 15%–25% more energy than water-cooled systems.