Modeling for the influence of variable inlet airflow states on liquid desiccant wheel performance at low flow conditions

Desiccants can be a part of a sustainable approach to maintaining healthy and comfortable indoor environments. The use of desiccants is a unique technique in that it can dry the air without precooling below its dew point. The removed latent load may be double the removed sensible load. This paper presents an analysis of a low-flow liquid desiccant air conditioning system. This analysis was designed to identify and study the various parameters that affect the performance of the desiccant air conditioning system. LiCl was used as a desiccant in this study. A liquid desiccant air handling-machine was thermally modeled. The system performance was evaluated for a regenerative hot water temperature of 88 °C, and the recorded parameters included the required heating water flow rate, cooling water flow rate, and thermal C.O.P. The results show that the system C.O.P is more affected by changing dry bulb temperature than by changing air flow rate. It is also shown that in our case study, 36 °C dry bulb temperature is a reversed point as before that temperature the heating rate is more than the total cooling rate but after it the opposite is true.