Comparative experimental study of three passive cooling systems in hot and humid climate.

This paper presents the experimental results of the comparative study of three Passive Cooling Systems (PCSs) for the natural conditioning of dwellings carried out in Maracaibo, Venezuela. An experimental platform has been built to study the thermal performance of PCS. It includes: two full scale test cells, a meteorological station and an automated data acquisition system. The results are analyzed in terms of Indoor Characteristic Temperatures (JCT), Mean Cooling Potential (MCP) and the Cooling Performance Index (CPI) of each PCS. The studied systems have shown MCP values ranging from 14.7 up to 27.8 W/m2; which means a daily cooling energy average between 353 W/m2 and 670 W/m2. It have been also determined CPI values which represent a thermal cooling loads reduction up to 64%. Two PCSs turned to be especially efficient: the first one, where cooling is achieved by nocturnal radiation and indirect evaporation and the other one, where cooling is achieved by continuous indirect evaporation.