A regulation strategy of working concentration in the dehumidifier of liquid desiccant air conditioner

This study presents a new desiccant concentration regulation strategy for the dehumidifier of a liquid desiccant air conditioner (LDAC). Starting from the mass balance principle, the proposed strategy supplies the strong solution in an intermittent manner to maintain the required working concentration, and the dehumidification rate is monitored as the feedback to improve the regulation performance. Compared with the conventional method, this new solution transfer strategy avoids the continuously solution exchanging, while allows multiple dehumidifiers to work simultaneously with only one regenerator. A mathematical model emphasizing on the concentration profiles is developed to determine the parameters of the proposed strategy. Simulations and experiments are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy in different working conditions. The results prove that the proposed strategy can keep the working concentration at the pre-specified range with less energy consumption during the solution transfer. With this strategy, conventional LDAC can be extended to a mode with multiple dehumidifiers and one regenerator for large-scale applications in buildings.