Energy Performance Evaluation of a Desiccant Air Handling System to Maximize Solar Thermal Energy Use in a Hot and Humid Climate

Abstract

A desiccant air handling unit is one of the major types of dehumidification handling systems and requires hot water or hot air to regenerate sorption materials. If solar thermal energy is used as the heat source for regeneration, in general, a backup electrical heater, backup boiler, or combined heat and power (CHP) is installed in order to maintain a stable hot water supply. In this study, effective control is proposed for a desiccant air handling system that uses solar thermal energy (flexible control), and its energy performance is compared to that of a traditional control (the fixed control) through a system simulation. The diurnal behavior shows that the system with a fixed control without a backup boiler cannot process the latent load properly (28 GJ of unprocessed latent load for July and August). On the other hand, the system with a flexible control without a backup boiler is able to process required latent heat load. Based on the fact that the fixed control needs a backup boiler to process the latent load, the system with a fixed control with a backup boiler is considered for the energy performance comparison. The simulation results show that the primary energy-based coefficient of performance (hereafter, COP) of the system with a flexible control without a backup boiler reaches 1.56. On the other hand, the primary energy-based COP of the system with a fixed control with a backup boiler reaches only 1.43. This proves that the flexible control contributes to the higher energy performance of the system and maximizes the use of solar thermal energy more than the fixed control.

Performance of an Adsorptive Heat-Moisture Regenerator Based on Silica Gel–Sodium Sulphate

“…The proposed air conditioning unit was able to ensure thermal and humidity comfort over 90% of the time in an arid climate, whereas only 50% to 60% comfort time share was experienced in a warm humid climate. A solar-based heat pump-assisted system was modelled by Luo et al [31] in Taiwan, and it was found to be suitable for application in such a warm and humid climate; the results were corroborated by Ukai et al [32] who also incorporated the effect of optimised system regulation.…”