Desktop A/C unit. This can't possibly work! Prove me wrong? - Lemmy.world

Prove me wrong, please? Spouse bought this thing that claims to cool the air by blowing across some moist pads. It’s about as large as a toaster, and it hat a small water tank on the side. The water drips onto the bottom of the device, where it is soaked up by a sort of filter. A fan blows air through the filter. 1. Spouse insists that the AIR gets cooled by evaporation. 2. I say the FILTER gets cooled by evaporation. 3. Spouse says the cooled filter then cools the air, so it works. 4. I say the evaporation pulls heat (and water) from the filter, so the output is actually air that is both warmer and wetter than the input air. That’s not A/C, that’s a sauna. (Let’s ignore the microscopic amount of heat generated by the cheap Chinese fan.) By my reckoning, the only way to cool a ROOM is to transport the head outside. This does not do that. We can cool OURSELVES by letting a regular fan blow on us = WE are the moist filter, and the evaporation of our sweat cools us. One could argue that the slightly more humid air from this device has a better heat transfer capacity than drier air, but still, it is easier to sweat away heat in dry air than in humid air. Am I crazy? I welcome your judgment!