District Heating and Cooling Technology Development Program: Phase 2, Investigation of reduced-cost heat-actuated desiccant cooling systems for DHC applications

Abstract

A detailed assessment has been completed of the use of desiccant-based customer-sited heat-actuated cooling for District Heating and Cooling (DHC) systems, showing that introduction of a reduced-cost desiccant cooling system would result in widespread market penetration. This program consisted of three principal components: a market study of existing and future reduced-cost liquid desiccant cooling (LDC) systems; an examination of the installed costs of these existing and reduced-cost LDC systems; and four detailed case studies. Both the installed cost and equivalent chilled water cost of existing large LDC systems were found to be quite competitive with district chilled water, while the high capital cost of small LDC systems made them more expensive than district chilled water. Potential total system sales in this existing large-scale LDC market are quite low, since most of the market for DHC space conditioning is in smaller equipment sizes. Cost savings realized from producing a reduced-cost LDC system would result in small LDC systems (sized well below 6,000 cfm) becoming competitive with the current range of district chilled water costs.