Simulation analysis of a novel no-frost air-source heat pump with integrated liquid desiccant dehumidification and compression-assisted regeneration

This paper proposed and investigated a new no-frost air source heat pump (ASHP) combined with liquid desiccant dehumidification and compression-assisted regeneration. In the system, an additional vacuum compressor is introduced in the regeneration cycle to recover the regenerated heat, which could improve the performance the hybrid no-frost ASHP system. A mathematical model of the novel system is constructed to further study the characteristics of the system under various operating parameters and climatic conditions. Based on the simulation model, the results show that the COPanverage of the system varies from 2.811 to 3.242 when ambient air temperature rises from −10 to 0 °C at a constant relative humidity of 80%. And with the ambient air RH increasing from 70% to 90% the COPanverage decreases slightly from 3.285 to 3.20 when the temperature is at 0 °C. In addition, the effects of air-to-solution mass flow rate ratio in the dehumidifier and regeneration temperature on the performance of the system are discussed. Finally, a comparison study between the proposed system and typical reverse-cycle defrosting system is presented, which indicates that the COPanverage of the novel system is at least 36.05-61.19% higher than that of the COPreverse in the variation ranges of the analyzed parameters.