Performance characteristics of a compact self-circulating liquid desiccant air dehumidification system coupled with a heat pump: A comprehensive parametric study

Abstract

Integration of a heat pump with a liquid desiccant system for air dehumidification has received growing attention in recent years in view of its more compact size and lower electricity consumption. This paper presents a compact combined heat pump and self-circulating liquid desiccant air dehumidification system targeted at small cooling load applications. The compactness lies in the integration of the dehumidifier and evaporator as well as the integration of the regenerator and condenser. Besides, the design of solution self-circulation (SSC) is intended for energy savings and the auxiliaries are employed to help achieve energy matching between the heat pump and the air dehumidification system. First, a comparative study is performed to identify the more energy efficient one of the two strategies for energy matching. Based on this, a thermodynamic model-based parametric study is conducted to investigate the effects of various influencing factors on the energy matching relationship and performance of the proposed system, as well as the energy-saving potential relative to the basic system without SSC. The results show that there exists an optimum solution self-circulation ratio (SCR) to achieve the maximum COP under a given condition. Basically, the proposed system with a proper SCR could yield a significant energy-saving effect regardless of the performance variations under studied operation conditions. It is found that a reduction of 29.68 % in energy consumption and an improvement of 42.20 % in COP are achieved under the ambient condition of 30 ℃ temperature and 20 g/kg humidity ratio. Furthermore, a correlation analysis is used to reveal the association strength and direction between any two main operation and performance parameters. Finally, the heat recovery is proved to effectively reduce the cooling coils load. This paper provides an in-depth understanding of the energy matching relationship and demonstrates the energy-saving performance benefiting from SSC for future practical applications of the proposed system.