Enclosed Barn Conditioning System: A Comparison Between Traditional and Indirect Evaporative Cooling

Enclosed barns can be an effective farming system, providing proper animal welfare conditions to the cattle, with also positive effect on dairy productivity.On the other hand, the air conditioning process can be extremely energy-intensive and expensive, especially during summer months.This is not only due to the high air temperature and the solar irradiance, but also because of the metabolic heat produced by the cattle.The climatic condition considered for this study is the temperate-no dry season-hot summer, typical of northern Italy, where more than 80% of Italian milk is produced.Two conditioning strategies have been evaluated: the traditional chiller with a reverse thermodynamic cycle and an indirect evaporative cooling system based on the Maisotsenko cycle.The two systems were analytically compared considering an enclosed barn with a population of 500 lactating cows, highlighting the pros and cons of each systems.Traditional reverse cycle is capable of consistently reaching the chosen thermo-hygrometric conditions, ensuring the highest dairy productivity.However, this comes at the expense of significant energy expenditure.On the other hand, indirect evaporative cooling is not always able to reach the planned conditions, but it guarantees a significantly lower energy expenditure.