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This paper presents performance analysis of two new evaporative cooling pad materials. Now-a-days evaporative cooling pads are commonly made from aspen and khus fibers. These two materials along with new materials namely coconut fibers and palash fibers have been tested in a laboratory using suitably fabricated test set up. Air flow rate was kept constant. Evaporative cooling effectiveness was obtained and compared with that of aspen and khus pads. The effectiveness of pad with palash fibers was found to be 13.2% and 26.31% more than that of aspen and khus pads respectively. Whereas effectiveness of coconut fibers was found to be 8.15% more than that of khus and comparable with that of aspen pad. Khus pad offers lowest pressure drop where as aspen pad (most commonly used) offers highest pressure drop among the four materials tested. The proposed new material (palash) offers pressure drop lower than that of the aspen pad. Because of better performance, lower costs and easy availability of coconut and palash fibers, their use as wetted media may enhance the scope of using these materials in domestic and commercial evaporative cooling systems for sustainable development. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.