Abstract
Clean air heat pump (CAHP) is a new technology that combines air cleaning with hygro-thermal control of ventilation air, which is regarded as a potential integrated technology to improve indoor air quality. In CAHP, a regenerative silica gel rotor is used for both moisture control and air cleaning. This study experimentally investigated the effect of moisture on the air cleaning performance of a desiccant wheel with the objective to guide practical operation of CAHP. The experiment was conducted in a laboratory by testing air cleaning performance of a CAHP using five typical indoor pollutants - formaldehyde, acetone, ethanol, toluene and 1,2-dichloroethane as air pollutants. It was found that although the VOC concentration was low and only used a very small fraction of the wheel's adsorption capacity, the moisture load still had an adverse impact on the VOCs removal and the extent of impact was increased with the increasing of moisture load. This negative effect of moisture on the removal of non-water-soluble pollutants was more serious than on water-soluble pollutants. Faced with the results, it is suggested to achieve VOCs and moisture removal by means of controlling regeneration air temperature of desiccant wheel assisted with automation program for the CAHP system.
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