Conference Paper

Proceedings of Building Simulation 2021: 17th Conference of IBPSA

Design Approach towards Photovoltaic Thermal Solar Air Heater (PVT-SAH) assisted Solid Desiccant Cooling (SDC) System for Daytime Operation

Aditya Nibandhe, Nima Bonyadi, Bruno Lee, Ashutosh Bagchi
Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montreal (Canada)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26868/25222708.2021.31013
Abstract: In typical solar-assisted Solid Desiccant Cooling (SDC) systems, the processed air exhausted after the Sensible Wheel (SW) corresponds to wasted useful energy. By using the exhausted air from SW as input to the solar collector, further improvements in the system’s thermal Coefficient of Performance (COPth) and unmet hours can be achieved. This research aims to improve the performance of an integrated Photovoltaic Thermal Solar Air Heater (PVT-SAH) assisted SDC system to cool a retail store of a low-rise mixed-use building in a hot and humid climate for daytime operation. For this purpose, a couple of improvements to an existing configuration are proposed, and three different configurations have been analyzed and compared. The annual average COPth for configurations 1, 2, and 3 comes around 0.95, 1.90, and 2.23, respectively. It is observed that configuration 3 offers 135% and 18% improvement in COPth over configurations 1 and 2. Configuration 3 achieved 12% unmet hours (48% and 33% lower than configurations 1 and 2, respectively).
Keywords: PVT-SAH, Solid Desiccant Cooling, Hot and Humid Climates
Pages: 3332 - 3339
Paper: