Evaporative Cooling 101

Thirty minutes on the treadmill, three kilometers down, two to go. Your heart is racing, adrenaline soaring and you’re perspiring heavily. You step off the machine, cheeks burning, forehead glistening. You stand, arms out-stretched, in front of a high-velocity fan. Ah, the sweet relief! Within minutes, the perspiration is no more and you feel so much cooler. Why did that work?

Let’s do some Chemistry 101.

When your body overheats, it cools down through a process called evaporation (among other biological processes). Your sweat glands release the body’s excess heat through producing sweat. This layer of warm liquid – sweat – covers your skin, and when it comes into contact with air, the hotter and more highly-energized sweat molecules escape the herd and evaporate into the air. This leaves the remaining perspiration on your skin at a cooler temperature and the air around you that teeny bit moister with increased water vapor. Now you feel cool and refreshed. Add a powerful fan to the mix, and this chemical process happens that much quicker.

Now, let’s rewind to the beginning of that scene, except this time, instead of stepping out in front of a high-powered fan, you walk outside into the Florida summertime. For those unfamiliar with East Coast summers, they are humid! So humid, you can almost cut the air with a knife. You are drenched with sweat from your workout, your t-shirt is soggy and there is simply no relief. You stagger into your car, jack up the air conditioning and finally feel some respite. Why is that?

Evaporation becomes increasingly less effective the more humid the air is. On those hot, humid days, when the air is already saturated with water vapor, there’s little space to absorb more moisture. The hot, clammy perspiration sits on your body until you enter into a cool, dry climate that allows for evaporation.

Now for some Evaporative Cooling 101

So far, so good? Now you are ready to understand how the Quilo evaporative air cooler works. It follows this same principle of converting hot liquid into moister air. The Quilo is designed with a honeycomb cooling pad, a water tray and a pump. The pump circulates the water from the water tray, through the unit, wetting the honeycomb media. The fan then sucks in hot air from the outside and through the media, transferring the heat from the air into the cool water. The fan then converts these liquid molecules into water vapor, emitting cooler, but moister, air on the other side.

This is why evaporative air cooling is highly effective in dry, arid heat, but much less effective in hot, humid weather. Evaporative cooling thrives on a continuous supply of dry air which it can then moisten and cool. If the air is already humid and saturated with vapor, it cannot transfer heat energy into the chemical process of evaporation.

The Quilo 3in1 brings you cooling, fanning and humidifying for all-season comfort. Check out the map below to see if your climate is ideal for evaporative cooling during those hot summer days. Quilo’s evaporative air cooler can drop temperatures by up to 15F in hot arid zones. As for dry winters, no matter your region, if your home is uncomfortably dry during the cold season, you can benefit from Quilo’s humidifier. Check out the Quilo quick start guide for more details.