A desiccant-enhanced evaporative air conditioner: Numerical model and experiments

This article presents modeling and experimental results on a recently proposed liquid desiccant air conditioner, which consists of two stages: a liquid desiccant dehumidifier and an indirect evaporative cooler. Each stage is a stack of channel pairs, where a channel pair is a process air channel separated from an exhaust air channel with a thin plastic plate. In the first stage, a liquid desiccant film, which lines the process air channels, removes moisture from the air through a porous hydrophobic membrane. An evaporating water film wets the surface of the exhaust channels and transfers the enthalpy of vaporization from the liquid desiccant into an exhaust airstream, cooling the desiccant and enabling lower outlet humidity. The second stage is a counterflow indirect evaporative cooler that siphons off and uses a portion of the cool-dry air exiting the second stage as the evaporative sink. The objectives of this article are to (1) present fluid-thermal numerical models for each stage, (2) present experimental results of prototypes for each stage, and (3) compare the modeled and experimental results. Several experiments were performed on the prototypes over a range of inlet temperatures and humidities, process and exhaust air flow rates, and desiccant concentrations and flow rates. The model predicts the experiments within ±10%.

► We studied a new process combining liquid desiccants and evaporative cooling.
► We modeled the process using a finite-difference numerical model.
► We measured the performance of the process with experimental prototypes.
► Results show agreement between model and experiment of ±10%.
► Results add confidence to previous modeled energy savings estimates of 40–85%.