Experimental measurements of water evaporation rate in indoor swimming pools

Abstract

The aim of the study was to determine the water evaporation rate in indoor sports and recreational swimming pools during laboratory tests and to compare them with published and predicted values. The research was carried out for a model of an indoor swimming pool (water surface area was 0.6732 m2). Water evaporation rate for an unoccupied sports swimming pool (water temperature 26oC, air temperature 28oC, relative air humidity 44%) was 0.060 kg·m-2·h-1 and it was 35% lower than for recreational 0.092 kg·m-2·h-1 (water temperature 30oC, air temperature 32oC, relative air humidity 50%). For the occupied pools these values were higher and were 0.099 kg·m-2·h-1 for the sports pool, and 0.127 kg·m-2·h-1 for the recreational. These were the values for the nominal occupancy of the facility – 1 person per 9 m2. The relationship between the intensity level of use and the water evaporation rate was linear. An increase in the use intensity by 1 level resulted in an average 7.6% increase in water evaporation rate for sports pools and 4% for recreational pools. The comparison showed that the Shah’s model have the best fit to experimental data and is recommended for designing HVAC systems.