Prediction of evaporation from occupied indoor swimming pools

Reliable methods for the prediction of evaporation from occupied indoor pools are needed for sizing the air conditioning equipment and for energy consumption calculations. No well-verified method of prediction is available at the present. Two new correlations are presented here. One is based on the analysis of physical phenomena and the other is purely empirical. A literature survey was done to collect test data from occupied indoor pools. Analyzable data were found from four sources. These include pool areas from 64 to 1209 m(2), occupancy from 64 to 3 m(2) per person, water temperature from 25 to 30 degreesC, air temperatures from 26 to 32 degreesC, and relative humidity from 32 to 72%. These data were compared to the new correlations as well as the existing correlations. The new empirical correlation performed best with a mean deviation of 16.2%. The next best was the new phenomenological correlation with a mean deviation of 26.2%. The Carrier correlation performed well at high occupancies. The new correlations provide reliable methods for predicting evaporation from occupied pools and will be useful in design and analysis. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.