“I bet these guys never heard of a swamp cooler either
I made a ghetto 5gal bucket evap cooler and dumped
Salt on the ice long long ago”
That is not a swamp cooler. A swamp cooler cools via evaporation of liquid water not the melting of ice,
Also, a swamp-cooler works best in very low humidity. I rarely see them other than in deserts.
This statement bothers me: “approximately as efficient as refrigerators now on the market.”. If the efficiency was better they would be screaming that number from the rooftops. Based on that alone, we can assume it’s less than current refrigerators. Just how less is the key. Since this article cherry picked data and showed a spiffy schematic of the cycle they are hiding the real efficiency.