Theoretical and experimental study of the effect of biomass based organic packing wettability on the LDDS and its life cycle analysis

Abstract

Present study aimed at the fabrication of a counter flow dehumidifier unit using biomass-based organic materials like coconut coir and wood shave as packing alternatives. The wettability of these packings is evaluated by arranging them structurally and their influence on the dehumidification performance has been experimentally studied. A prediction-based mathematical model is constructed to simulate the performance of biomass packing materials. Theoretical and experimental results were very close, with an average deviation of 8.33% for wood shaving and 5.79% for coconut coir packings. Overall, this unit gave the rate of moisture removal (MRR), dehumidification effectiveness (DE), coefficient of mass transfer (MTC) and specific humidity ratio equal to 0.70 g/s, 76%, 37 kg/m2-s and 0.78 respectively. A packing life study and its influence on dehumidification performance is checked. After the third week of continuous usage, results revealed that air contamination CO2, TVOC, and HCHO levels increased by 14.60%, 34.48%, and 38.46%, and the moisture removal rate decreased by 29%, for wood shaving packing. After the third week, the performance deteriorated since the packing fragments became brittle due to the salt interaction. This fibre breakage affected the wettability significantly.