Condenser heat recovery with a PV/T air heating collector to regenerate desiccant for reducing energy use of an air conditioning room

Abstract

This paper presents an experimental test along with procedures to investigate the validity of a developed simulation model in predicting the dynamic performance of a condenser heat recovery with a photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) air heating collector to regenerate desiccant for reducing energy use of an air conditioning room under the prevailing meteorological conditions in tropical climates. The system consists of five main parts; namely, living space, desiccant dehumidification and regeneration unit, air conditioning system, PV/T collector, and air mixing unit. The comparisons between the experimental results and the simulated results using the same meteorological data of the experiment show that the prediction results simulated by the model agree satisfactorily with those observed from the experiments. The thermal energy generated by the system can produce warm dry air as high as 53 °C and 23% relative humidity. Additionally, electricity of about 6% of the daily total solar radiation can be obtained from the PV/T collector in the system. Moreover, the use of a hybrid PV/T air heater, incorporated with the heat recovered from the condenser to regenerate the desiccant for dehumidification, can save the energy use of the air conditioning system by approximately 18%.