Performance investigation of the wood-based heat localization regenerator in liquid desiccant cooling system

An energy conservative air-conditioning system is critical to promoting energy conservation and emis-sion reduction. One promising alternative is liquid desiccant cooling system (LDCS), which can be driven by low-grade heat and has superior dehumidification performance. However, energy waste from tradi-tional regeneration process restricts its application from widespread use. To overcome this disadvantage, a wood-based heat localization regenerator is presented: it localizes the thermal energy on the regen-eration surface avoiding the unnecessary heating of bulk solution. The real performance of this new regenerator has been investigated theoretically and experimentally in this paper. The regeneration process of desiccant solution has been analyzed and a regeneration performance prediction model has been developed. Some performance indexes have been derived from experimental data. A regeneration performance comparison has been conducted between the heat localization method and the traditional heating method. The results show that the new method improves regeneration thermal efficiency by above 50% and the maximum value can achieve 43.6%. Besides higher performance, the reduction of energy consumption, initial cost and complexity has achieved with the heat localization regenerator. The overall improvement makes LDCS such a competitive alternative to the current air-conditioning system. (c) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

By utilizing a wood-based heat localization regenerator in the liquid desiccant cooling system, regeneration thermal efficiency can be improved by over 50% with a maximum value of 43.6%. This method not only reduces energy consumption and initial cost, but also enhances system performance, making it a competitive alternative to conventional air-conditioning systems.