Control strategies for a liquid desiccant air-conditioning system

Liquid desiccants are energy efficient in air dehumidification. A significant amount of research has been conducted on liquid desiccant systems, but little attention has been paid to the control issues surrounding such system. In this study, a novel dedicated outdoor air-conditioning system that adopts liquid desiccant dehumidification is proposed. A simulator of the proposed system is built on the TRNSYS platform. Control methods for the supply air dehumidification and solution regeneration processes are presented, and their effectiveness is evaluated. Two control strategies are developed for the proposed liquid desiccant system based on the evaluation results. The control performances of these two strategies are compared under different operation conditions using simulation tests.