Conference Paper
Proceedings of ASim Conference 2012: 1st Asia conference of IBPSA-China, Japan, Korea
Feasibility of a liquid desiccant application in an evaporative cooling assisted 100% outdoor air system
Feasibility of a liquid desiccant application in an evaporative cooling assisted 100% outdoor air system
Min-hwi Kim, Seul-ki Han, S.Y. Cho, Jae-weon JeongAbstract: Of the components of a liquid desiccant system in an evaporative cooling assisted 100% outdoor air system (LD-IDECOAS), liquid desiccant is the only active system that conditions the supply air. However, the liquid desiccant solution that is heated for regeneration should be cooled to prevent heat transfer from the solution to the process air. This paper introduces the operation of only the cooling tower without a chiller to cool the liquid desiccant solution. The thermal performance and energy saving potential of the cooling tower employed in the proposed system were estimated via a conventional VAV system. For the conventional VAV system, the conventional vapour compression refrigerator, which is composed of a chiller and cooling tower, was assumed to be applied to the cooling of process air. In order to evaluate the cooling energy consumption during the cooling season, the proposed system was modeled using the TRNSYS 16 energy simulation program. The cooling tower capacity and performance data were obtained from the manufacturer. In order to simulate the solution heating process, RETscreen is also used to estimate the performance of solar thermal system for solution heating source. The simulation results showed that the cooling tower can be operated without the chiller allowed to serve higher cooling water temperature for cooling the liquid desiccant solution. Although the outlet water temperature of the cooling water did not attain the targeted value when the weather was too humid, one might show that the liquid desiccant solution was generally maintained at a target temperature of 30C. This problem did not significantly affect the thermal performance of the proposed system. The cooling energy demand for LD-IDECOAS using only the cooling tower was reduced by 52-59% relative to the conventional VAV system. * Corresponding author email: jeong.jaeweon@gmail.com Pages: 219 - 226 Paper: