Towards reliable model validation of evaporative coolers: Unified terminology and benchmark datasets

Evaporative cooling technologies are getting more attention in the scientific community due to the urgent need to satisfy the growing demand for cooling buildings while decreasing emissions. Evaporative coolers offer a promising alternative to standard vapour-compression cycles, and many evaporative cooler variants have emerged in recent years to improve their performance. Similarly, the number of models developed to assess the performance of evaporative cooler configurations and simulate their behaviour under various operating conditions is constantly increasing. To obtain relevant results using simulation, it is necessary to perform a proper model validation, which is often handled using experimental data from the literature. However, model validation based on data from the literature can be time-consuming because the terminology of evaporative cooler configurations is not unified throughout the literature, and it requires gathering data from existing papers, which is rarely accessible in tables. This paper provides a framework for model validation using a two-step approach. First, the authors propose a comprehensive classification of evaporative coolers to unify the denominations of evaporative cooler configurations and understand the advantages and drawbacks of existing configurations. Second, standardised datasets are provided for each identified type of evaporative cooler. 18 datasets have been generated using existing experimental and numerical data from the literature, covering various operating conditions. Full datasets are available in an online open-source database to help the reader with model validation of various evaporative cooler configurations.