Working bodies create heat. It doesn’t matter if that body is a hard-working man or a mechanical device, heat output is just a part of energetic motion. Fortunately, evolution has seen fit to gift us with perspiration, the production of a light coating of sweat. And, better yet, this evaporative mechanism has been artificially transplanted to our machinery. Of course, the scale of the system has been dramatically augmented, but we’re still looking at a natural cooling solution, one that’s used for cost-effective factory cooling.
Bad Factory Air Equals Poor Productivity
A manufacturing workspace is a dynamic cauldron of activity, one that ironically includes that aforementioned biological cooling solution in the form of sweating employees. This operator-generated heat escalates as it rises in concert with machine heat, becoming stagnant and claustrophobic if it’s left to hang in the stuffy air. Vents and passive cooling solutions help to push this hanging cloud away, but there’s still the issue of hot air to deal with. Evaporative coolers not only aid in the distribution of this work-propagated heat cloud, they do so naturally and without consuming tons of electrical energy.
Augmenting the Economical Aptitude of Evaporative Coolers
Worker welfare and machine efficiency both wilt under the stress of heat. Thankfully, practical factory cooling mechanisms are on hand. They incorporate direct and indirect solutions, portable or vented architectures to place energy evaporative coolers close to an undesirable heat source. A portable model can be rolled into action on the factory floor, filled with water and set in motion, left to produce 19,000 CFM from a 2 metre square frame while pumping water at 9,200 litres per second through a network of wear-resistant tubes. They can be plumbed into the building water supply or left to their own devices thanks to an independent tank. Roof top models are also available, with fixed housings sending a waterfall of cold water rippling across a sponge-like pad. On the factory scale, this sponge and its accompanying electrical fan take on greater importance. The sponge medium is shaped in some models as a set of louvres, while others use a simpler block of large, square pads.
Factory cooling represents a large investment, but the profit-protecting feature of the cooler delivers more than savings. A factory that can drop its ambient temperature, even by as little as 6°C, will extend the life of expensive equipment and lower maintenance costs. Additionally, the evaporative solution consumes 10 percent of the electrical energy used by other cooling systems, thus bringing savings into the facility that can be used to buy new equipment. Finally, these coolers are excellent “air washers,” devices that are quite simply better at producing clean, healthy air, which equals healthier, productive workers.