On-site performance investigation of liquid-desiccant air-conditioning system applied in laboratory rodent room: A comparative study

Abstract

Considerable ventilation rates in laboratory animal rooms indicate huge energy consumption of air-conditioning systems. The liquid-desiccant air-conditioning (LDAC) system is regarded as an energy-efficient system, which can help to save energy in laboratory animal rooms. However, limited studies have applied LDAC systems to this kind of rooms for energy conservation. In this study, a demonstration project is focused on, wherein both the LDAC system and conventional vapor-compression system are used in the laboratory rodent center. On-site measurements were conducted to reveal the energy performance difference between the two systems. The test results reveal that the considerable cooling loads of two rodent rooms air-conditioned by the conventional system and LDAC system are 482.1 W/m2 and 576.8 W/m2, respectively, under the summer conditions in Beijing. The LDAC system can avoid reheating and recover cooling from the exhaust air from indoors. Thus, the coefficient of performance (COPsys) of the LDAC system ranges 3.5–4.5, whereas the COPsys of the conventional system only ranges 1.8–2.3 during the test period. During the entire cooling season, an electric power saving rate of 37.3% can be achieved by the LDAC system. Moreover, although both systems can satisfy all the environment control requirements, the LDAC system is beneficial for particulate matter filtration, yet slightly unfavorable for reducing indoor ammonia concentration, compared to the conventional system.