Development of the solar evaporation-dehumidification cooling system

Abstract

Solar evaporation dehumidification cooling system makes use of low-grade solar energy as heat resource, and its development and utilization for energy conservation and emissions reduction is of great significance. A new cooling prototype composed of evaporation dehumidification cooling device (i.e. air dehumidification device, indirect and direct evaporation cooling device) and solar energy regenerator (i.e. solar energy collector, desiccant regenerator) was designed and developed. Experimental prototype had been tested for 3 years in summer in Jinyun county, Zhejiang province, China. The results showed that the outdoor air could be cooled to 17 °C(dry ball temperature) at the condition of 35 °C and 50-60% relative moisture, and moisture content in air was dehumidified from 22 g/kg to 10 g/kg. EER <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sub> and EER <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> of the evaporation dehumidification cooling device could achieve 12.03 and 0.99, respectively. Solar energy consumption was 92% and electricity consumption was only 8% of the cooling energy consumption. In the solar energy regenerator, air moisture content increment between inlet and outlet could reach 50.4 g/kg and regeneration efficiency was 58%. In general solar energy utilization rate in the whole system was 76.5%. It was concluded that this solar evaporative dehumidification cooling system achieved expected performance, and that established research foundation of solar cooling technology for large-scale application.