This paper experimentally studies the cooling performance of seawater and freshwater for evaporative cooling of air. A low-speed wind tunnel was designed to test wet media evaporative cooling performance with seawater and freshwater, respectively. CELdek7060 media at thicknesses of 100 mm and 300 mm were used for studying. Sea salt was used to prepare different concentrations (i.e. 0.5, 1 and 1.5 times of seawater concentrations), and freshwater was the tap water. It was found that the pressure drop values caused by different concentrations of seawater and freshwater are close at the same water flow rate and the same thick medium. The cooling effectiveness of seawater is slightly lower than that of freshwater, and it decreases with the increase in seawater concentrations. For 100 mm and 300 mm media, the cooling effectiveness values of seawater (1 times seawater concentration) are 2.8-7% and 2.8-4.9% lower than that of freshwater, respectively, within the air speeds of 0.45-3.03 m s⁻¹ at water flow rate of 62 l min⁻¹ m⁻². The empirical correlations of heat transfer coefficient for freshwater and different concentrations of seawater are developed. This study proves the feasibility of evaporative cooling using seawater, which is a significant benefit for evaporative cooling applied in coastal areas for saving freshwater.

本文通过实验研究了海水和淡水用于空气蒸发冷却的冷却性能。设计了一个低速风洞，分别用于测试海水和淡水对湿介质的蒸发冷却性能。使用厚度为100 mm和300 mm的CELdek7060介质进行研究。用海盐配制不同的浓度（即海水浓度的0.5倍，1倍和1.5倍），淡水是自来水。结果发现，在相同的水流量和相同的厚介质下，不同浓度的海水和淡水引起的压降值接近。海水的冷却效果略低于淡水，并且随着海水浓度的增加而降低。对于100毫米和300毫米的介质，^-1在水流动的62升min的速率^-1米^-2。建立了淡水和不同浓度海水的传热系数的经验相关性。这项研究证明了使用海水进行蒸发冷却的可行性，这对于在沿海地区采用蒸发冷却以节省淡水具有重大好处。