Liquid desiccant systems find many applications in a very large variety of industrial and daily usage products including the new HVAC systems. The present study introduces a new design for compact uni-shell dehumidifier/ regenerator liquid desiccant system. The latest trends in this area suggest that hybrid systems are of current interest to HVAC industry not only for high latent heat load applications but also for improving indoor air quality. The present study aim to evaluate the performance of the proposed liquid desiccant air dehumidifier system. The performance parameters for the air dehumidifier are the reduction ratio of air humidity ratio and the dehumidifier effectiveness. Several experiments were carried out under the following operating conditions; cooling water inlet temperature (10oC - 18oC), desiccant solution inlet temperature (26oC- 33oC), air flow rate (3.4 l/s - 6 l/s), air inlet temperature (38oC- 51oC), air inlet humidity ratio (21-25gw/kgda), desiccant solution mass flow rate (0.04 kg/s - 0.13 kg/s), desiccant solution to air mass flow rate ratio (10-26), heating water temperature ( 42oC-51oC), and desiccant solution concentration (10% to 45%).
Experimental setup was designed and constructed to achieve the operating conditions mentioned before. The experimental results showed that both the reduction ratio of air humidity ratio and effectiveness of the dehumidifier increase as desiccant solution mass flow rate, desiccant solution to air mass flow rate ratio, the desiccant concentration, and the heating water temperature increase. Also, both the reduction ratio of air humidity ratio and effectiveness of the dehumidifier decrease when the cooling water inlet temperature, the desiccant solution temperature and the air flow rate increase. The performance parameters were almost unaffected with the inlet air temperature. The dehumidifier reduction ratio of air humidity ratio slightly increases while its effectiveness remains constant when the air inlet humidity ratio increases. Empirical correlations based on the present experimental results for the performance parameters in terms of the different operating conditions were developed
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