Study on an internally-cooled liquid desiccant dehumidifier with CFD model

Abstract

The liquid desiccant air conditioning system is considered as a possible substitute of the traditional air conditioner mainly due to its characteristics of energy saving. The dehumidifier is a key component of the system therefore was chosen as the research object. It was found the present models conducted the simulation with lots of assumptions, especially ignoring the effect of flow behavior. Besides, most studies focused on the inlet and outlet parameter changes rather than the interior condition of the dehumidifier. To fill the research gap, a model for an adiabatic dehumidifier was established with CFD technology in authors’ previous study. On the basis of it, a model was further developed in present work for internally-cooled liquid desiccant dehumidifier. The interior heat and mass transfer processes were then simulated with the model, followed by the detailed performance investigation. Analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of some factors, including inlet desiccant temperature, desiccant flow rate and two types of internally cooling, and variable physical properties. The advantage of present study lied in its more in-depth analysis of interior condition of the dehumidifier. Besides, the study also demonstrated the necessity of considering the variable properties of desiccant solution during the simulation.